Club Jade

If you’re Andy Woerner and his crazy rocketeer friends (translation: Geeks), and you have an idea, four Class M solid-fuel rocket engines, Baltic Birch wood, solid aluminum, CAD software, and friends at Polecat Aerospace (helped by RMS Laser and Aerotech Consumer Aerospace), what would you do?

Build a flyable X-wing fighter, of course.

The Flight of the X-Wing occurred on October 6.

There’s another, more extensive video here. There’s also a link at the bottom to the launch of a Y-Wing on the same day, with in-flight camera footage!

Building notes and video of the X-Wing rocket.

Can Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda move beyond Chad Vader?

ABC News featured the Wilhelm scream Sunday night.

Drew Struzan’s original paintings on display at Oregon gallery.

Roleplaying jokes meet Star Wars in the Darths & Droids webcomic.

Y-Wing rocket fares slightly better than X-Wing. Of course, it’s still in pieces, but I don’t think anyone is expecting otherwise.

Elsewhere, Gizmodo polls on what the X-Wing folks should do next. As I post this, the Millennium Falcon is winning. People are sadists, man.

Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, the latest host of the Science Meets Imagination exhibit, is auctioning off an X-Wing miniature autographed by George Lucas.

Lucas was also on-site Friday for the exhibit’s opening.

The rocket did launch, but didn’t… exactly… stay up very long. Oh well! (via)

UPDATE: Longer version with background chatter on Gizmodo. (Thanks, Fen!)

Andy Woerner and friends have a built a 21-foot by 19 foot X-Wing out of plywood and aluminum, powered by four solid-fuel rocket engines. The wings are radio-controlled and actually move. All the way. Into attack position. How crazy are these folks?

The X-Wing will launch next week (unmanned!) Gizmodo has the full story and all the rocket-geek details.

Why do X-Wing fighters have wings? (via SF Signal)

* The traditional definition, that is.

Kettched in the Act by DarthFar. I doubt the piece as a whole is really a spoiler to anyone here, but you’ll have click through twice to see the whole thing.