Blasting out of this world

Andrew Edwards

A sunny day in the park set the scene for a small band of Surf City

children to launch their creativity beyond the limits of Earth’s

atmosphere into the far reaches of the solar system.

The 3, 2, 1 Blast Off camp at the Edison Community Center was the

place for space enthusiasts to spend a summer morning. The campers

crafted models of Saturn that sometimes resembled the celestial

sphere, and at other times were products’ of the campers’

imaginations.

Children used markers to color two foam half spheres that would be

glued onto discarded AOL CDs, providing a useful purpose for the

ubiquitous software.

“I’m going go mix colors,” 8-year-old Austin Smith said. “And with

my CD, I’m really going to scratch it up.”

Austin didn’t scratch his CD to give it the scraggly appearance of

Saturn’s ice-bound rings, it was just a chance to play DJ as he built

the model.

“Remix rules,” called out 8-year-old Zachary Adriance to the sound

of Austin’s scratching.

According to NASA, the yellow and gold bands seen in pictures of

Saturn are caused by heat rising up from inside the planet and winds

that are much faster than earthly hurricanes. At summer camp, colored

markers and glitter gave the models distinctly different looks than

the actual planet.

“I don’t really have a design at all, I just put it on,”

10-year-old Timothy Portfolio said as he sprinkled glitter on his

project.

For others, realism was the goal.

Zachary equipped himself with orange and yellow markers in order

to craft an authentic-looking model, humming the “Imperial March”

from “The Empire Strikes Back” as he worked.

“I want it to look like a regular planet,” Zachary said.

In addition to making the small Saturn, the campers spent their

week in the camp exploring other spacey concepts, such as rockets.

Before making Saturn, the campers made models that could be propelled

by breathing through a straw and the “flying fizzer,” which used an

Alka-Seltzer tablet and water to bubble a model skyward. They also

built model rockets that could be launched by a small engine, though

any blast-off for those rockets would be done with the campers’

parents, instructor Tom Knox said.

In the meantime, the smaller, less explosive models were enough to

hold the children’s interest.

“I like rockets a lot, and they’re real cool to launch,” Timothy

said.