Four boys, a rocket engine, and a neighbor who thought the building was on fire
By Ovi Catanescu, based on my memories and those of my brother, Adi
The Owl Never Forgets.
It all started at school.
My brother Adi and his friend Marian had a homeroom teacher named Lidia Diaconu, an excellent mathematics teacher and, I must admit, an exceptionally beautiful and distinguished woman.
For the end-of-year school celebration, Mrs. Diaconu asked her students to perform in a short play about a Young Pioneers' model rocketry club and a competition in which its members were participating.
Pioneers, just like us.
In the play, the students portrayed young rocket enthusiasts preparing for a competition.
The highlight of the performance was the launch of a rocket.
The rocket was supposed to produce a little smoke, a few sparks, and a brief flame. Then, using a pulley system, it would be pulled upward until it disappeared above the stage.
Afterward, it would make a spectacular descent with a parachute.
Everything was carefully arranged, and the performance was a success.
For most of the students, that was probably the end of their space adventure.
But not for Adi and Marian.
They decided that since they had already been involved with rockets, even if only in a school play, it was time to move from theater to real scientific research.
They wanted to build a rocket engine that actually worked.
And that was how the rest of us joined the adventure: Dănuț, Marian's younger brother, and me.
There were four of us: Adi, Marian, Dănuț, and myself.
A team of enthusiastic researchers, without a laboratory, without a budget, and, most importantly, without much experience in evaluating danger.
But with almost unlimited technical curiosity!
Building the Engine
All four of us participated in building the engine.
For me, at least, it was an extraordinary experience.
We weren't satisfied with simply reading about how a rocket engine worked. We wanted to understand it, build it, test it, and see the results with our own eyes.
We didn't have access to the fuels we associated with real rockets, such as hydrogen and oxygen, so we decided to experiment with a liquid fuel.
The engine had a combustion chamber, and we were concerned with sustaining combustion and directing the flame where we wanted it to go.
And this is where another character enters the story, someone who unknowingly contributed to our space program.
Our mother.
At one point, we needed a thimble.
Yes, an ordinary sewing thimble!
Mother gave us one without having the slightest idea what we were planning.
To her, it was simply a thimble.
To us, it was an important component of the engine, used in the area where the flame was supposed to emerge.
If Mother had known what we intended to do with her thimble, I seriously doubt we would have received it.
But Mother knew absolutely nothing about our aerospace research.
And, to be fair, neither did we fully understand just how dangerous our experiment could become.
The Great Experiment
Eventually, the engine was ready.
Only one thing remained.
We had to test it!
And where do you suppose we decided to conduct such an experiment?
In the stairwell of the apartment building where we lived!
Yes, right there.
All four of us were present.
Adi held the engine with a pair of pliers. One of us was responsible for starting the experiment with a match, while the others watched eagerly.
The moment of truth had arrived.
And the engine worked!
In fact, it worked even better than we could have imagined.
An enormous flame erupted from it, extending from the first floor all the way down to the basement.
Can you picture the scene?
Four boys, a homemade rocket engine, and a gigantic flame shooting through the stairwell of an apartment building!
And, as with any important scientific experiment, there had to be an independent witness.
Our witness appeared at precisely that moment.
A neighbor was just entering the building.
He saw the flame and thought the entire building was on fire!
Fortunately, he quickly realized what was actually happening and didn't call the fire department.
I don't even want to imagine what might have happened if a fire truck had arrived and someone had demanded to know who was responsible for the fire.
The End of the Space Program
The most amazing part was that the engine remained completely intact.
Nothing had been damaged.
From a technical standpoint, the experiment had been a success.
The engine had worked, the flame had emerged exactly where we intended, and the results had exceeded all expectations.
Perhaps a little too much.
Because despite our success, we were forced to bring our scientific research in rocket propulsion to an end.
I think that decision resulted from a combination of factors.
The people around us probably weren't particularly enthusiastic about such experiments.
But, to tell the truth, even for us, the most experienced scientists in the apartment building, the results had been a little more than we could handle.
So we decided to redirect our attention toward other fields of scientific research.
Some of them even more interesting.
And not necessarily any less dangerous.
Looking back today, I realize how reckless we had been. One mistake could have turned our experiment into a tragedy.
But we were children.
Curious, inventive, and convinced that the world was full of things we needed to discover for ourselves.
And we still had so much left to discover!
The Brăila Space Program had come to an end. Our research continued.
In Memory of Marian and Dănuț
Today, of the four boys who built that rocket engine, only Adi and I are still here.
Marian and his younger brother, Dănuț, are no longer with us.
Both died of lung cancer.
Dănuț smoked throughout his life. Marian also smoked for a period of time, but eventually quit.
Marian graduated from the Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in Machine Design and Manufacturing.
He became an engineer.
During the final years of his life, he worked for a company that manufactured various plastic parts and products. His job was to design, build, and maintain the molds used to inject molten plastic.
From conversations Adi had with him, he understood that Marian suspected the gases and fumes released during plastic injection molding might have contributed to his lung cancer. We don't know whether that suspicion was medically justified.
But I find it remarkable that the boy who once helped us build a rocket engine went on to make his living designing and building things.
The technical curiosity and ingenuity of his childhood remained part of his adult life.
I like to remember Marian and Dănuț as we were back then: four boys from Brăila, our heads full of ideas, with boundless confidence in what we could accomplish together.
We had no idea what life had in store for us.
We didn't know how much time we would have together.
All we knew was that there was something to build, something to discover, and, of course, something to test.
For Marian and Dănuț, who were part of the adventures of our childhood.
The Owl Never Forgets.