Launching to the Moon - Lab 3

This is a video of our initial launch. We taped a large fully blown-up balloon to a straw to create our 'rocket'. This 'rocket' was strung on a fishing line to see if we could launch our 'rocket' to the moon (the wall) sucessfully. The 2nd half of this experiment was to stay in bugdet. We had $4.7 million budget our group had $3,966,000 to spare by the end.

We did three launches, the first was as described a straw with one balloon taped onto it, it was amazingly sucessfull. The second we reused teh 1st balloon (to save money) and tried to send up two wheels taped onto the balloon, that did not work at all! I think it was just too much of a load so it didn't get off the ground. Then we tried again with two balloon and one wheel taped to each balloon. This didn't go all the way to the moon but it made it off the ground a bit.

In this experiment Newtons 3rd law is applied. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you let go of the balloon the air flows out and pushes down -> this forces the straw and the rest of the rocket to be pushed up ( <- ) and to the moon. I think this is an important experiment because we may have to take off and launch to or from the moon and if something goes wrong we can't troubleshoot unless you know what should really be happening. Something I am interested in trying is this same experiment with helium balloons. Helium is lighter than air so I am curious if it would have the same equal and opposite reaction and make the rocket go to the moon.