This is a book written in the 60’s about a group of boys who have a rocket club which meets on the farm of an old army general.
They design various rockets, and at one point there is an accident because two of the boys decide to include dangerous design changes. I think they eventually get a trip to see a launch in Florida. This is NOT Hickman’s “Rocket Boys” or “October Sky”. It is also not “Countdown to Zero”.
Perhaps this is one of The Mad Scientists’ Club books by Bertrand Brinley.
No, unfortunately. But they are some of my and my children’s favorite books of all time! Here I am, 53 years old, and I still literally laugh out loud when I re-read them for the umpteenth time. Thanks for the suggestion!
Does the book open with a boy finding a spent rocket half-buried in a field? In his search to find out how the rocket came to be there, he finds out about the club.
I think there might have been two books in this series. I read them in the late 1960s or early 1970s, though they had to have been published earlier. (Our small school library was built on donations of old books.)
Do you know, I think it does! I also read them in the early 70’s, and was pretty sure it was our school library that had it. Any other memories of it? Is your school still around?
“Blast-Off!” by Bruce Cassiday, pub 1964?