Tag: motivation

How to build a rocket, or achieve any goal, part 3: Create a plan

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By this point, I had decided that I wanted to build – and ultimately launch – a high power rocket. I had done some preliminary research to make sure I wasn’t crazy, that this was actually doable, and that I had some rough idea of where to start. Now what?

rolled up paper blueprints
image credit: adobe stock

I broke the goal down into the steps necessary to get there. If a step didn’t seem manageable, I broke it down further into smaller steps until it was. Here are what the steps looked like for me:

  • Start simple. Buy a small low power rocket kit, build it, and launch. I ended up building two: the Crossfire and Amazon, both Estes brand rockets.
  • Next, buy a larger kit (low to medium power), build it and launch it. For this, I built the Estes “Mean Machine,” a tall thin rocket that can fly on slightly more powerful motors.
  • Learn more about the electronics in a rocket, like how a flight computer works.
  • Get an amateur (“ham”) radio license. Of course, you can absolutely build and launch a rocket that has no onboard electronics. The rocket has everything needed to go up, successfully deploy a parachute, and return safely to the ground without anything fancy. But there are a lot of cool electronics you can add, and some even allow live data transferred through radio waves (which is called telemetry). The more I learned about this, I realized that in order to legally use a flight computer with telemetry, I needed to have a basic ham radio license.
  • Build a workshop. We have a small house, and I had been using our family kitchen table for my rocket projects, but I really needed a dedicated space for tools and construction. I decided to take our old garden shed in the back yard and renovate it into a usable workshop space.
  • Finally, build a larger high power rocket with electronics bay – and launch it.

You can see how this plan is supposed to work. I couldn’t necessarily just jump to the last bullet and skip everything else. I mean, I could, in the same sense that I could theoretically just decide to run a marathon with zero training or running experience. It’s not a good idea and isn’t going to end well.

I’d never built a rocket before, even a small one, and it made much more sense to start with something easier and gain a better understanding of what I’m doing. A lot of things could easily go wrong, especially in a hobby involving explosives.

All of these bullet points or steps could be broken down further into smaller steps. Even with the very first bullet above – build a small, low power kit – I had to choose one and actually build it. The construction process didn’t take a terribly long time, but it involved a lot of cutting and sanding and gluing, and later, priming and painting. It also required that I understand what else is needed in order to launch: rocket kits don’t come with motors, which must be bought separately, and they don’t come with electronic launch controllers or launch pads, which also must be bought separately. I had to figure out how to install the motor, set up the launch pad and connect the controller to ignite the motor, and of course, ensure I understood the rules for a safe launch. And I had to figure out where exactly I could launch – something that turned out to be surprisingly difficult. You need a big, open area without any trees nearby – because the rocket will very likely descend under parachute into a tree, forever out of your reach. In a city or urban area, this can be hard to find.

Other steps required even more work and could be broken down further. Transforming the shed in our back yard into a workshop required putting in windows (where it had none), replacing the door, cleaning out a bunch of junk and hauling it away, installing a butcher block workbench, and running wires out to the shed from the main electrical panel in the house for electricity (outlets and lights).

How to create your plan

All right – so you’ve given it some thought, come up with a specific goal, and done a bit of research. The toughest part is now out of the way. Congrats!

Creating a plan doesn’t have to be difficult, and in fact it can be motivating. You may be overwhelmed if you think about your overall goal – where do you even start? But if you can break it down into smaller steps, each of them will feel much more achievable.

Let’s use the example mentioned earlier: say you’ve always wanted to run a marathon, and you have absolutely no running experience. You might feel like the goal is so far out of reach that it’s hopeless. But there’s no reason to be so pessimistic. Instead, you could create a plan where you start out by going for very short jogs, once or twice a day. Start as small as needed. Even if you’re totally winded or doubled over with a painful cramp after just a couple of blocks, that’s fine – you just want to start with something manageable and keep repeating it, consistently. After a few days your muscles will start to get used to this, and you won’t feel as sore or as winded. You can gradually expand to run longer distances.

Your plan would of course depend on your starting skill level: have you never run before in your life? Or have you previously completed a dozen 5k runs? It would also depend on how much time you have before your marathon: is it six months from today, or is it next week?

Realistically, if you had six months to train, you could put together a 26 week plan. In the first week, you might run just a quarter mile – a few blocks – once a day. In week 2, you could increase the distance to a half-mile every day, and by week 4, perhaps one mile each day. By the end of the second month, you could be running a 3 miles (a 5k) every day, and so on. It could be this simple – increasing distance gradually – or your plan could incorporate other aspects of training, like different types of exercise, a change in diet, having a buddy keep you accountable, etc.

More generally, your plan just depends on two variables: (1) the distance or gap between where you are today and where you want to be (your end goal), and (2) the passage of time. All else being equal, the larger the gap – the more ambitious the goal – the more time you will likely need to achieve it. But it’s completely achievable.

How to build a rocket, or achieve any goal, step 2: Research

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As I mentioned in the last post, it is impossible to accurately convey just how little I knew about the whole subject of rockets when I first started thinking about building and launching one. I was completely in the dark, waving my arms around wildly in front of me and unable to see anything. Incidentally, this is my typical research technique.

image credit: pitt honors blog

I initially turned to my good friends Google, Reddit, and Quora. As you might guess, this led me down all sorts of rabbit holes. But this is exactly what you want at this early stage.

I discovered, for example, that there are two large organizations in the US dedicated to amateur rocketry: the National Association of Rocketry (NAR) and Tripoli. Both have been around for decades, and both have hundreds of local clubs spread out across the country – clubs full of other people who share similar interests in rocketry and that periodically host rocket launch events.

I found one local Seattle club, Washington Aerospace Club (WAC), and joined right away. I attended a couple of meetings in person (just before the pandemic hit) and was fascinated that there was a local group of like-minded people who were just really into building and launching rockets. I made some new friends and also found a couple much more experienced people as mentors. More on that below, but finding a mentor is highly recommended.

There’s a lot to learn about building a rocket, whether small or large. There’s also a lot to learn about launching a rocket. Construction techniques, types of rockets, motor sizes and classes, recovery methods, launch pads and towers – the list goes on without end, and that’s without getting into the more sophisticated systems and electronics. I’ve written extensively in previous articles on my blog about many of the basics in rocketry for those who are interested.

But the point is that I needed a crash course, a rockets 101, and I had to do some serious information gathering to even have a bare minimum of competence in setting a goal.

How to do your own research

To take another potential non-rocketry goal at random: let’s say I’ve always wanted to climb Mt. Everest, or some other large and ominous mountain. I know absolutely nothing about this, so where would I start?

I know my end goal in this scenario – scale the mountain and get to the summit, preferably alive. That’s pretty clear, specific, and measurable. But how exactly do I get there, literally or figuratively?

I don’t know enough to even come up with a reasonable plan at this stage. I’d need to do some research, which would start out by brainstorming and asking logical questions: where does a person start (physically) when beginning the climb? Some sort of base camp? Is this something you can do alone, or do people generally hire a professional guide and/or go in a group with others? What kind of clothing and equipment do I need? How long does something like this take – days, weeks, months? Do you have to train ahead of time? What dangers do I need to be aware of? The list of questions goes on.

Or let’s take a less lofty goal, but one that to many people is much more important: passing a big exam you have coming up in the future. Maybe it’s your final exam in a class, or maybe it’s a one-time licensing exam for your career. You know the goal here: get a passing score, or get as high a score as possible. That’s specific and measurable, and almost entirely within your control. But how to do it?

This might not appear as extreme as scaling Mt. Everest, but it can still be pretty stressful and demanding, depending on the subject and the exam, and on what kind of test-taker you are. You wouldn’t be starting out totally in the dark – at the very least, you know that you need to study a lot, and you probably know how to study relatively well.

But even in this scenario, you would benefit from doing some research. We can all stand to improve our study habits, and there are lots of tips and tricks and “hacks” you could use to help. For a really big test, where you will need to devote countless hours to studying, it might be worth looking into ways to boost your studying and use your time more efficiently. Maybe flashcards would help you with memorization, or maybe a buddy will keep you accountable to ensure you’re not slacking.

As mentioned earlier, a mentor can be very helpful as well. It may not be strictly required or worthwhile depending on the particular goal – for example, you probably don’t need a mentor to pass a test, even a very big and difficult one. But if you were planning to scale Mt. Everest, or even run a marathon, a mentor could really come in handy. Receiving the benefits of advice and guidance from someone who has real life experience in your field is absolutely invaluable.

So go ahead – spend a few hours on Google or Wikipedia, get involved in a local organization or club, find a mentor, and do some old fashioned research. And then you’ll be ready for step 3: creating your plan.

How to build a rocket, or achieve any goal, step 1: Set the goal

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Is it legal to build and launch your own rocket?

man in green jacket looking up at the sky, with snow covered pine trees in background
me, pretending to daydream

A few years ago, I was daydreaming, and this question occurred to me. I quickly realized I had no idea what the answer was. It also raised dozens of related questions: am I capable of doing this by myself? Do you need some sort of government approval? What are the rules? Are there limits on how big the rocket could be? Could I put something into orbit? What if my rocket blew up, or came crashing down onto someone else? Putting aside any potential comedic value, this could create some big liability for me.

Let me step back for just a moment. I’ve always been interested everything related to space, astronomy, or rockets. As a kid, I read lots of science fiction books on space travel. The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov was (is, still) my favorite book series of all time. Fast forward a few years, and as an adult, I watch with fascination every time that Elon Musk makes an announcement or SpaceX lands one of its rockets vertically, in something that looks like it is straight out of sci-fi. But I’m not actually a rocket scientist. I never considered building a rocket myself. I didn’t even know it was possible to build one, unless you were an enormous government agency like NASA, or a handful of large private corporations – Blue Origin, SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Astra, or other similar large companies. It sounds… complicated.

Now, for the first time, I started thinking about it. Maybe I could build my own rocket. Why not? What the hell?

Of course, I need to stress just how little I knew at the time. To be fair, I should also stress just how little I know even now, but astoundingly, it was even less then. I was totally in the dark. I didn’t know there were local clubs all across the United States where amateurs built and launched small rockets as a hobby. I didn’t know that some people took that hobby to much greater extremes and built relatively sophisticated large high-powered rockets. I didn’t know the rocket body and rocket motor were two completely different things, or what obstacles would be involved in building one. I didn’t know that launching a small low power rocket to 1,000 ft was something that even a child could do, whereas hitting 100,000 ft was a remarkable achievement that generally takes a whole team of very smart and very experienced experts in the field – and very few people (or groups) have ever achieved it.

Suffice it to say, if I listed everything that I didn’t know when I first started, I would never finish writing this article.

But I was curious, and I started looking into it. Setting and fine-tuning the goal was an iterative process. I had to do some basic research and find out more, only to go back and tweak the goal. Putting something into orbit is pretty unrealistic, for a lone individual doing this in their spare time. But building and launching a “high power rocket” (which is defined a certain way, based on the size of its motor) was attainable, at least after some smaller rockets and ample practice.

I ordered a small, low power rocket kit and started putting it together. I realized I really enjoy the process of building, and learning more about different rocket parts and what functions they perform. The longer term goal was to build a high power rocket, but I had to start somewhere as I’d never done this before.

How to set your goal

You are not me, of course, and chances are, you don’t plan to build a rocket yourself. Perhaps you don’t want to blow yourself up, or perhaps you’re just not interested in rockets. No matter. (Hats off to you for reading this anyway on a blog primarily dedicated to rockets.)

What’s important here is coming up with your own goal. This is easier said than done. You know what you’re interested in, or passionate about, and you generally can’t go wrong spending your time doing something enjoyable. But a goal needs to be narrower, more targeted – something where you know when you’ve achieved it, where you can cross it off a list (figuratively or metaphorically) and say yes – I did it. In other words, it needs to be specific and measurable.

It also needs to be largely within your control. True, nothing is ever 100 percent within your control. Life has plenty of external circumstances and obstacles that can be thrown in your path. A global pandemic might occur, for example, or you might be hit with a stray high power rocket (don’t look at me). But you don’t want to choose a goal that is largely outside of your control, as a starting point, no matter what you do. That’s a sure path to frustration and disappointment – and wouldn’t be particularly satisfying even if you happened to achieve it, by chance.

Consider the time period involved as well. There’s no magic number as a minimum or maximum, but you probably don’t need to go through a lot of planning to achieve a relatively simple goal that can easily be done in an hour. At the other extreme, you don’t necessarily want a goal that takes decades and ultimately consumes the rest of your life. In that case, you’d be better off breaking it into several smaller goals, with more reasonable timeframes.

You may not be starting out as hopelessly naive as I did. But once you decide to set a specific goal, you will likely need to go through a similarly iterative process, learning more and then revising the goal accordingly.

How to build a rocket, or achieve any other goal

improbableventures4 Comments

I’ve been thinking for a while now that I should write something at greater length about how to build a rocket. Not the technical stuff – I’ve written extensively already about epoxy and airframes and electronics – but just the whole journey and mindset. I started with no knowledge or experience and, through a lot of trial and error, I still have no idea what I’m doing – but I could at least share the lessons I’ve learned so far.

smiling man in jeans and green coat standing outside holding a large white and red rocket horizontally
i built this

Perhaps these lessons could be generalized to a lot of other things. Not everyone necessarily wants to build a rocket, or so I’m told. But everyone has their own goals, just as ambitious and often even more so. And everyone has to complete some sort of personal or professional journey in order to get there.

So in the spirit of inclusiveness, here’s what I’ve learned since starting my rocketry journey that can be more broadly applied to any ambitious (or totally mundane) goals in your own life.

1. Set the goal. Figure out exactly what you want to do. This sounds like an obvious starting point, but it’s often easier said than done. You likely already know what you’d like to do, but sometimes you have a general idea and it’s just a little vague. Try to really get specific and measurable. For example, “I’d like to learn more” about some particular topic may be a little fuzzy, whereas “I will complete – and pass – this online course” about that topic is more specifically achievable.

2. Do some research. Find out everything you can about your specific goal and how to make it happen. Google it and poke around on the internet. Ask smarter and more experienced people for advice, and find a mentor. There may be more than one way to achieve your goal; there may also be large obstacles you didn’t foresee. If you’re anything like me, you likely have no idea what you’re getting into – and the more you learn, the more overwhelmed and discouraging it may be. Pro tip: don’t allow yourself to get discouraged too easily. Remember that other people have faced much larger odds and there’s always someone who has done something even more ambitious and/or crazy (of course, they did not always survive the attempt, so plan accordingly).

3. Create a plan. Once you’ve set a narrowly targeted goal and done some basic research related to it, you need a plan. Create a framework where you list every major step needed to achieve the goal. If each step appears daunting, break it into sub-steps so that it’s more manageable. Depending on your original goal and its complexity, you may need to drill down several levels here – maybe some of the smaller steps are still too much, and they need to be broken down further. Keep going, creating something like an outline, and get down to the level where you can complete the first step today – immediately. You may need to do this over several iterations, going back and revising the plan a couple of times to fine-tune it. If it’s too vague, then it’s too hard and won’t get done.

4. Jump in and get started. It’s tempting to just keep revising and tweaking the plan to perfect it. Resist this temptation. While you certainly need to think through your goal, do some research, and come up with a plan, you also cannot continue to plan forever. At a certain point, you need to just jump in and get started – otherwise you will be waiting indefinitely. And there’s a lot to be said for real life experience, and trial and error. Once you start, you’ll run into obstacles you didn’t know about, and perhaps could not have possibly known about, until you moved from the planning phase to the execution phase. You’ll realize certain things were more difficult than you thought, but you’ll also discover entirely new things that you really enjoy, and never would have known about otherwise.

5. Learn from mistakes. Keep plugging away. A slow pace is fine as long as you are making measurable and continuous progress. Remember that when you learn new things, your brain literally changes, forming new physical connections. This is amazing when you think about it. And along those lines, you will not only run into obstacles but you’ll also make some mistakes. Some will be unforced errors that you easily could have avoided. Other mistakes will inevitably happen no matter how well you planned or how much research you did. That’s fine. Don’t get discouraged – as the saying goes, sometimes you win, and sometimes you learn. A mistake or a loss can easily be transformed into a powerful lesson.

Bonus: celebrate completion – and then pivot and reassess. If you follow this plan and have the determination and willpower, you will get there. Don’t worry. And as soon as you achieve that goal, you’re entitled to celebrate and relax. But you may find that after completing this journey, your goal has shifted or evolved. That’s okay too. You are now a different person, with more knowledge and experience than when you first began this journey. As noted previously, your brain has physically rewired itself throughout the learning process. So post-goal completion, you may want to pivot to set a brand new goal, or to build on your previous success. Go for it: you have wisdom now, and you know you can do difficult things.

I’ll expand on each of these in some future posts.