Dear Dr. Strangewater

Hey Dr. Bad

Twice now from my house over the last decade, we lucked out and
watched a rocket launch right at sunset out of Van. God it was
awesome! I live on a skypark and both times we were drinking beer
watching the sun go down in my back yard, which is about 400' from rwy
25 and then: what a show. We always stand out there, telling lies,
watching the amazing variety of bugsmashing machines try to negotiate
our desert runway; which as luck would have it, is immediately
following my 16 ft hangar that everybody hates (They don't blame me; I
didn't build it.) Great shows by legends in their own minds and
luckier than can be believed dweebs and students assures constant
entertainment every night. My legal (by four feet) hangar is the
great private pilot equalizer. But back to the topic!

The first shot the upper level wind took and distorted the contrail
for the following half hour or so: Twisted and spread the sucker like
a basket of snakes all over the sky. Man it was something. Then, a
few months ago the ICBM test went off towards the pacific. That one
was the best (zero wind.) We were all standing out there unaware again
(as airport drunks, er bums often are) and then all of a sudden, here
comes this asshole with a really bright landing light head-on against
the landing traffic! I told my buddy Ron, the skypark president, Oh
Oh watch this, Ron, this asshole's going to do a high-speed pass
opposing landing traffic! In the clear desert air, staring right into
the sunset it's tough to judge distances. Sun had just gone down, so
it made sense that moron here, who was going to scatter the traffic,
flipped his light on cuz he was coming from the west. But as seconds
went by, it became apparent as he got closer to us that he was really
packing a wallop! I thought: oh yeah! a green-eared test pilot that's
going to buzz the joint cuz his commander's away! (we get a show like
that every blue moon.) And then he started trailing smoke real bad
and then it hit all of us: a rocket out of Van. God it lumbered
slowly upward. All of us broke out into ****-eating grins while the
women gasped and shrieked. Then it bent over for the pacific (from
our persp.) and penetrated out of the atmosphere. A huge
neon-iridescent lavender umbrella opened up that looked kind of like
the first volcano image of Io. It sat there glowing for nearly an
hour and reminded me of the aurora borealis.

Now Dr. Strangewater, what the hell was that all about? Was it
propellant? Charged ion? What? Then tell us some rocket accounts
and use: "following is all fictional" preceding the story to quell any
jealous trolls/dweebs.

Your pal,

pacplyer