Thought I give you some background, pix of my builds, and some philosophizing to lighten your day.
I got back into card modelling last winter. I've been building for a long time - plastic models, simple index card boats, balsa fliers many years ago. Evolved into carpentry and associated boat building therapy.
'yer simplest boat: 12' can-yak at 1:1 scale from 1/4" plywood (that's paper before the pulping for the purists here...)
Retired after 28 years service and became active doing education with the local Air Force Association chapter. We do an annual educator workshop for local teachers (STEM - science, technology, engineering, and math). Local AF base tour (flight line and flight simulators), speakers and hands-on seminars on bringing STEM into the classroom. The 2008 workshop had a session on stomp rockets (cardboard tube launched from PVC pipe attached to a 2 liter soda bottle - stomp on the bottle and the rocket goes!) and a display of a straw rocket launcher ($200 !!! from Pitsco).
While working up the 2009 agenda, I thought I could do stomp rocket launchers and a straw rocker launcher for door prizes. Showed the (CRUDE) prototype straw launcher to some local teachers at one of our meetings - and it was immediately conscripted and disappeared into the trunk of someone's car. So, I figured they would make good door prizes. A little more design and I had one you could build for less than $10 - as functional as the expensive launcher but more rugged (kids can go hands on) and cheap to fix if they did manage to break it (one bent tube - easily straightened - so far in all I've made).
Plans for stomp/straw rocket launchers posted at LHVCC (jleslie48.com) under the downloads / miscellaneous .
Decided to look for something more exciting than just straws to launch - tried a few simple flat gliders. Then I found these:
NASA shuttle glider in 20# bond paper printed at two pages per sheet and a similar build of a free Cub from Fiddler's Green via the USAF Civil Air Patrol's education efforts. A bit of work on the straw mounting and center of gravity and they make really good fliers off the launcher.
Neat as they were, I went looking for rockets too (Google is a wonderful thing). Found lots of links and sites - then the Lower Hudson Valley Challenger Center. Roland's 1:288 ARES I was perfectly sized - add some internal card washers with 1/4" holes and it flies! A scaled down (1:200) Landsbergen Soyuz and similarly scaled Long March/ShenZhou from Hong Kong (or a link from U-don's) also works well.
The reaction from the teachers at the workshop was enthusiastic and gratifying (gave away 4 stomp rocket and 16 straw rocket launchers as door prizes - and everyone got plans to make, or have the students make, their own). We had Winston Scott (astronaut) as keynote speaker and Les Gold from the traveling NASA team with a programs update and Lunar Material custodian certification class for the teachers - my competition was tough.
So, I could make paper rockets and aircraft without worrying about display space or dusting (wife was firm on the dusting models issue -NOT her job). I had plenty of teachers asking for real space builds - and the rockets were sturdy enough for the kids to handle, cheap enough to replace if needed, and simple enough the kids could build their own if it sparked an interest.
It was too cold to finish rebuilding my dock (still post hurricane Ivan repairs, this will make the third rebuild) so I spent some time in the shop.
A short period of insanity ensued.
To be continued ...