Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for April 29, 2018

Long ago when I was a kid, you could easily buy all the ingredients to make gunpowder. And we did. Still have all my appendages intact.

A little lesson in rocketry Charlie, don’t put the launch plunger one foot from the rocket.

Charlie needs to collaborate with Jason & Marcus (todays Fox Trot)!

Gunpowder is too fast for that size rocket, Charlie. Use “Rocket Candy” to cast your motor grain instead. You’re more likely to survive the launch.

Charlie’s gonna have a blast on the 4th!

We used to use match heads, worked well.

KNO3 is all but impossible to get in Canada. Ammonium Nitrate and diesel fuel are much cheaper and commonly available.

When my boys were young, we were part of a group that did model rocketry. Great fun and probably a lot safer than what this kid is doing.

So…Afternoon Delight?

I might have broken a window, with my experiments in rocketry and pyrotechnics, but at least I didn’t burn my garage down, like the twins up the street, did to theirs.

Double breasted lab coat. I thought they were extinct.

I’m just here to enjoy the comic.

“Next to the dynamite, dear.”

Last month’s news included a bit about a flat-Earther who built his own rocket, from stuff he assembled himself from plumbing and hardware stores, so he could launch himself far enuf up to be able to spot the edge of the planet. Didn’t hear how it turned out, but I presume he’s on the Darwin Awards watch list.

If you live near an Indian Reservation, you could buy fireworks year-round.

I like Charlie’s World as it reminds me how I used to see what I was doing as a child. A good balance to Danae’s over-cynical world.

That was me as a kid. In Vietnam I became a Combat Demolition Specialist. C-4 and TNT and PETN and ammonium nitrate were much more fun than mere gunpowder or black powder. In college I graduated to more advanced formulas, like nitrogen tri-iodide. It worked wonders as a cockroack killer. Lately I’ve been sticking to filling a carpet tube with acetylene gas mixture and igniting it to rock the neighborhood on New Year and July 4.

Mom keeps gunpowder! ? ? ?

I know the feeling. As a kid, I used to launch bottle rockets using steel wool and 12 foot wire leads to a 12-volt battery.