The Rocket
Once there was a boy named Jack. Jack lived in a big house with his father and mother and baby sister. Jack's favorite thing was reading Popular Science Magazine. Jack would read it in the evening, while his father sat in front of the fireplace. The thing he loved most of all were the advertisements in the back of the magazine for experiments, kits, and other things you could send away for. One day Jack found an ad that said "build your own rocket ship" for $9.95. Jack ran over and showed his father who said he thought that it couldn't be a real working rocket ship. But, for $9.95, Jack's father decided they would try it out.
Jack and his father wrote a letter to the ACME Rocket Ship company of Kansas City Missouri, and wrote a check for $9.95. The ad said they would have to wait 6-8 weeks for delivery.
The summer passed. Jack was very busy with football and swimming, and playing with his friends. He all but forgot about the advertisement in the magazine.
One day, when Jack was coming back from the swimming pool, he saw a semi-truck in front of his yard. On the side of it were the words: "ACME Rocket Ship Inc." Jack suddenly remembered the ad, and started running as fast as he could towards his house.
Jack's father was standing outside the house, holding a clipboard, and talking with the delivery men. There were four of them, and they were already unloading the huge truck. Boxes and crates, spools of wire, and hundreds of other things that Jack didn't know how to describe were being unloaded onto his lawn, and into his garage.
Jack's father was checking the clipboard, and looking around the yard in total disbelief. It was obvious he did not expect the Rocket Ship to ever come. It was even more clear that this was no toy Rocket Ship. The parts were huge, and made of real metal. There was an assembly instruction book that was a foot high stack of paper.
The garage was soon full of parts and boxes, and the larger pieces, like the fuel tank, had to be left on the lawn. The delivery men did a final inventory of everything they had brought to make sure all the parts had been delivered. Finally, the semi-truck pulled away, completely empty, leaving Jack and his father to wonder what they would do next.
The Build
Jack's mother was skeptical, to say the least. But the instructions were very detailed, and that evening, as Jack and his father poured over them figuring out how the Rocket Ship could be put together.
That huge fuel tank sitting on the lawn, weighed over 300 kilos, but there was an included winch to lift it. There were many structural pieces that needed to be bolted together, but it soon became clear that all the specialized tools required had been included. There were spools of electrical wire, and computer cables that needed to be installed along the whole length of the Rocket Ship, but the wiring diagrams were clear and easy to understand.
The following morning, they got started early. It was hard work unpacking the boxes, and reading the instructions over and over again. But the instructions explained how to test their progress, one subsystem at a time. And they did - making sure that all the parts they assembled were correctly placed, and in working order.
Slowly, but surely, the Rocket Ship started to take shape. They realized that the rocket wouldn't fit into the garage, so they put it together in the middle of their front lawn. The fuel tank was so large, it had to be lifted into place with the help of Jack's neighbor, Sam working the winch. By the end of the day, they had already bolted together the main parts of the Rocket Ship - but there was still a lot of work to do.
The wires. Who knew that Rocket Ships had so many wires? The electrical subsystem diagrams were clear but dizzyingly complex, and at first glance, the in flight computer system installation seemed like it might be impossible to get right. But the instructions, though complicated, could be followed carefully, and the test procedures gave Jack and his father confidence that they had installed everything correctly. When they made mistakes, the tests failed, and they quickly corrected them.
by the end of the second day, the Rocket Ship didn't look much different than after the first - except that it was covered in wires and network cables. As Jack went to sleep, he felt that he might be able to accomplish something huge.
Over the next few days, the rest of the Rocket Ship took shape. The cockpit was installed, including a refrigerator for snacks. The out shell of the Rocket Ship was riveted into place, and they even managed to apply a coat of bright red paint. By the end of the week, it looked like a real rocket ship was sitting in Jack's front yard. On Friday evening, Jack's dad finished running through the final round of tests for all the Rocket Ship's subsystems, and turned the page in the instruction book. The next chapter was called "Operation".
The First Flight
Jack looked at his father, whose eyes hadn't moved from that word. Maybe Jack's father hadn't really believed, up until that point, that they might actually fly the shiny red cylinder that now stood taller than their two-story house.
The first step was fueling it up. Jack's father drove to the gas station where they filled their car, and as many spare tanks as they could find. The fueling of the rocket had begun. They transferred the fuel and double checked the gauge. The Rocket Ship was full.
Jack's father asked where they should go. Jack thought. And what about the moon? He imagined the sensation of standing in low gravity on the surface of the moon. Looking up at the black, airless sky, and then jumping high, kicking up 4 billion year old dust.