Apr 11·edited Apr 11Liked by Glenn Harlan Reynolds
I'm so happy to hear that model rocketry is still going on, even if less so than when I was young. I had the great privilege of meeting Harry Stine once, at Space Access '94, in Phoenix. Back in those days commercial space was still very much in its infancy, and SpaceX and the others hadn't even begun yet.
At the time we pinned our hopes on the Delta Clipper, a proof-of-concept SSTO developed and built by McDonnell-Douglas. But OSD never took much of an interest and NASA--for all the usual reasons--had no desire for SSTOs to succeed: might have imperiled all those high-paying white-collar jobs, doncha know.
So Delta Clipper fell by the wayside, alas. I always thought Mickey Dee could have sold it to the Marines, as an alternative means of rapid global entry, but either McDonnell didn't pursue my suggestion or the Corps wasn't interested either.
Well, Harry Stine has long ago gone to his reward, but I like to think he's watching us from on high, nodding with approval each time a reusable goes up and comes back down. God rest you and keep you, brother.
Young boys -- I can remember (mid 70's) my friends and I would empty the gunpowder from several packs of firecrackers, put the powder into the hard tubes that formed the lower support of wire hangers, put a fuse in the middle and we had something that was many times more powerful than M-80's or the ashcans of those days. It's probably a minor miracle one of us didn't lose a few fingers in an accidental explosion. Looking back I'm amazed at the reckless stupidity of it all, - so much of being a young boy in the 70's involved reckless stupidity, but man did we have fun doing it.
I loved those Estes rockets when we were free-range kids. I don't know if the little plastic parachutes helped much in the recovery, though.
I do have so many happy memories of Independence day fireworks, lots of them launched off of our backyard sidewalk. We were actually permitted to hold sparklers in our bare hands (checking...still have all the fingers) and were able to set off crackers and those weird things that looked kind of like ash worms.
I didn't have the math or aptitutde to be a rocket scientist, but I appreciate those who were. What romance!
In recent years, I've often thought that if someone really did have that aptitude....now she could go to work for a genuine thrilling opportunity to do real Rocket Science and maybe help build a base on the Moon or Mars. I'm thankful that there are private enterprises outside of NASA for those people.
Brings back the scent of balsa wood. Been there, done that and launched my fair share of rockets. Became a space cadet when they rolled the black and white TV into my kindergarten class so we could watch a Gemini launch. I decided on that day that I would be the first "lady astronaut." Unbeknownst to me at the time, that ship had already sailed with a traumatized Soviet woman.
filled the CO2 cartridge with matchheads. Never did find the pieces after the bang, but it did bend the angle-iron launch ramp. I can't imagine a scuba tank.
We built balloons by ironing closed the top of dry cleaners bags and filling the balloon directly from a plug on the gas meter.
What wonderful memories. I was a townie, so my father drove me past the edge of town (where suburbs are today) to launch my Estes rockets. 1957, I think. Thanks for the memories. Oh and I did CO₂ cartridges, chlorate explosives, and nitrogen tri-iodide (worth looking up!) too. And I still have both eyes and all other bodily parts, but I don’t know how.
My high school senior is in his school rocketry club and spends time 3D printing parts for their launches. He’s heading to Purdue for engineering this fall and hopes to study aerospace. So there are still a few kids following this path today (admittedly I think they do just use model engines and don’t attempt to blow themselves up).
My brothers and I were so in love with these at one point that my father (an engineer) had a piece of heavy-wall pipe turned down to the exact diameter needed to hold Estes engines ("C", IIRC). So we could make our own rocket bodies extra cheap (three or four layers of spiral wound brown tape).
I vividly remember, at the age of nine, losing my first multi-stage rocket to the trees bordering the abandoned airport runway we used. Sigh.
In the spirit of, "every step was (mostly) logical; it was the whole thing that was foolish," my brothers decided to power a Lego car with an Estes rocket. But they didn't want to get caught, so they did it in the garage with the door shut. And when it didn't go off, the younger one was sent to check whether the igniter was still in place without remembering to remove the safety-pin. Did you know that Estes rockets ricochet when they hit a wall, and (after obliterating the Lego car), don't have any flight control surfaces on the engines themselves? How we survived childhood with our limbs attached, I'll never know.
Boy that article brings back memories. Estes has been around in one form or another since the late 50s. I am now 75 and remember shooting off - and consistently losing - rockets as a teenager. Something about the temptation to use larger and larger engines until the poor vehicle gets so high it just floats away to the next county.
Still have a picture in my home office of my oldest son and I (now 42 with three kids) and our best rocket. It survived many flights - some to a pretty good altitude. This was the only rocket that we ever were able to retire with honor, and it hung in his bedroom for many years.
I occasionally still see folks on some of the soccer fields west of Boston firing off rockets and also flying model aircraft - the type with real liquid fuel motors. I had one too as a kid and I believe the fuel in those days was nitro-methane; very corrosive and also explosive. Different times, alas.
I know these hobbies are not exclusively father-son, but that seems to be the main demographic and I can say for me and my oldest, it was both fun and a real bonding experience.
(I tried to attach a copy of the picture, but that feature does not seem to be supported.)
I too went through my Estes rocketry phase. It was great fun, and I learned how to build an aerodynamically stable rocket. My bro and I bought a "build your own rocket" kit with tubes of different sizes, different nose cones, sheets of balsa wood, etc.
I'm looking forward to introducing my son to model rockets in a few years.
I enjoyed a variety of model rockets. That *whooosh!* never failed to exhilarate. Worked my way up to Skill Level 4. Even had an Estes "Cold Power" rocket. Can't remember what the gas was. Couldn't really compete with the single-use engines.
Before Estes, you could buy a rocket that came with an air pump that used water as the reaction mass. My brothers and I had fun with that, though it was pretty safe. There was also a rocket that came with baking soda pellets that reacted with vinegar. Also pretty safe, though I remember as a kid that the rocket went pretty high.
When my son was 8 a ‘Young Astronauts’ group for boys and girls formed in the town, and together we did Estes rockets. For ‘Astronomy Day’ one year I arranged for a Shuttle Payload Specialist to visit and give a talk. A women’s pilot group awarded a trip to ‘Space Camp’ in Huntsville for a girl who won a contest. That summer my son went to ‘Space Camp’ at KSC for 4 days, which happened to coincide with a Shuttle launch. A few years later my son and I got VIP seats for a Shuttle night launch. That was incredible.
The technology bug stuck with him. He manages an IT department in charge of internet security for an energy corporation.
Thanks, Glenn -- that brought back good memories. When my sons were young, we got into the fun of rocketry. I am glad to hear that some kids are still doing it. Beats video games.
I'm so happy to hear that model rocketry is still going on, even if less so than when I was young. I had the great privilege of meeting Harry Stine once, at Space Access '94, in Phoenix. Back in those days commercial space was still very much in its infancy, and SpaceX and the others hadn't even begun yet.
At the time we pinned our hopes on the Delta Clipper, a proof-of-concept SSTO developed and built by McDonnell-Douglas. But OSD never took much of an interest and NASA--for all the usual reasons--had no desire for SSTOs to succeed: might have imperiled all those high-paying white-collar jobs, doncha know.
So Delta Clipper fell by the wayside, alas. I always thought Mickey Dee could have sold it to the Marines, as an alternative means of rapid global entry, but either McDonnell didn't pursue my suggestion or the Corps wasn't interested either.
Well, Harry Stine has long ago gone to his reward, but I like to think he's watching us from on high, nodding with approval each time a reusable goes up and comes back down. God rest you and keep you, brother.
Young boys -- I can remember (mid 70's) my friends and I would empty the gunpowder from several packs of firecrackers, put the powder into the hard tubes that formed the lower support of wire hangers, put a fuse in the middle and we had something that was many times more powerful than M-80's or the ashcans of those days. It's probably a minor miracle one of us didn't lose a few fingers in an accidental explosion. Looking back I'm amazed at the reckless stupidity of it all, - so much of being a young boy in the 70's involved reckless stupidity, but man did we have fun doing it.
I loved those Estes rockets when we were free-range kids. I don't know if the little plastic parachutes helped much in the recovery, though.
I do have so many happy memories of Independence day fireworks, lots of them launched off of our backyard sidewalk. We were actually permitted to hold sparklers in our bare hands (checking...still have all the fingers) and were able to set off crackers and those weird things that looked kind of like ash worms.
I didn't have the math or aptitutde to be a rocket scientist, but I appreciate those who were. What romance!
In recent years, I've often thought that if someone really did have that aptitude....now she could go to work for a genuine thrilling opportunity to do real Rocket Science and maybe help build a base on the Moon or Mars. I'm thankful that there are private enterprises outside of NASA for those people.
Brings back the scent of balsa wood. Been there, done that and launched my fair share of rockets. Became a space cadet when they rolled the black and white TV into my kindergarten class so we could watch a Gemini launch. I decided on that day that I would be the first "lady astronaut." Unbeknownst to me at the time, that ship had already sailed with a traumatized Soviet woman.
LOL,
Did the kits.
filled the CO2 cartridge with matchheads. Never did find the pieces after the bang, but it did bend the angle-iron launch ramp. I can't imagine a scuba tank.
We built balloons by ironing closed the top of dry cleaners bags and filling the balloon directly from a plug on the gas meter.
What wonderful memories. I was a townie, so my father drove me past the edge of town (where suburbs are today) to launch my Estes rockets. 1957, I think. Thanks for the memories. Oh and I did CO₂ cartridges, chlorate explosives, and nitrogen tri-iodide (worth looking up!) too. And I still have both eyes and all other bodily parts, but I don’t know how.
Thanks for sharing!
Dang. I play with them over one summer and ended up a chemist. Great to see kids still building them.
My high school senior is in his school rocketry club and spends time 3D printing parts for their launches. He’s heading to Purdue for engineering this fall and hopes to study aerospace. So there are still a few kids following this path today (admittedly I think they do just use model engines and don’t attempt to blow themselves up).
My brothers and I were so in love with these at one point that my father (an engineer) had a piece of heavy-wall pipe turned down to the exact diameter needed to hold Estes engines ("C", IIRC). So we could make our own rocket bodies extra cheap (three or four layers of spiral wound brown tape).
I vividly remember, at the age of nine, losing my first multi-stage rocket to the trees bordering the abandoned airport runway we used. Sigh.
In the spirit of, "every step was (mostly) logical; it was the whole thing that was foolish," my brothers decided to power a Lego car with an Estes rocket. But they didn't want to get caught, so they did it in the garage with the door shut. And when it didn't go off, the younger one was sent to check whether the igniter was still in place without remembering to remove the safety-pin. Did you know that Estes rockets ricochet when they hit a wall, and (after obliterating the Lego car), don't have any flight control surfaces on the engines themselves? How we survived childhood with our limbs attached, I'll never know.
Boy that article brings back memories. Estes has been around in one form or another since the late 50s. I am now 75 and remember shooting off - and consistently losing - rockets as a teenager. Something about the temptation to use larger and larger engines until the poor vehicle gets so high it just floats away to the next county.
Still have a picture in my home office of my oldest son and I (now 42 with three kids) and our best rocket. It survived many flights - some to a pretty good altitude. This was the only rocket that we ever were able to retire with honor, and it hung in his bedroom for many years.
I occasionally still see folks on some of the soccer fields west of Boston firing off rockets and also flying model aircraft - the type with real liquid fuel motors. I had one too as a kid and I believe the fuel in those days was nitro-methane; very corrosive and also explosive. Different times, alas.
I know these hobbies are not exclusively father-son, but that seems to be the main demographic and I can say for me and my oldest, it was both fun and a real bonding experience.
(I tried to attach a copy of the picture, but that feature does not seem to be supported.)
I too went through my Estes rocketry phase. It was great fun, and I learned how to build an aerodynamically stable rocket. My bro and I bought a "build your own rocket" kit with tubes of different sizes, different nose cones, sheets of balsa wood, etc.
I'm looking forward to introducing my son to model rockets in a few years.
I enjoyed a variety of model rockets. That *whooosh!* never failed to exhilarate. Worked my way up to Skill Level 4. Even had an Estes "Cold Power" rocket. Can't remember what the gas was. Couldn't really compete with the single-use engines.
My brother and I had a great time going through our rocket phase as kids. It was always so satisfying to build something and test it out successfully.
Before Estes, you could buy a rocket that came with an air pump that used water as the reaction mass. My brothers and I had fun with that, though it was pretty safe. There was also a rocket that came with baking soda pellets that reacted with vinegar. Also pretty safe, though I remember as a kid that the rocket went pretty high.
When my son was 8 a ‘Young Astronauts’ group for boys and girls formed in the town, and together we did Estes rockets. For ‘Astronomy Day’ one year I arranged for a Shuttle Payload Specialist to visit and give a talk. A women’s pilot group awarded a trip to ‘Space Camp’ in Huntsville for a girl who won a contest. That summer my son went to ‘Space Camp’ at KSC for 4 days, which happened to coincide with a Shuttle launch. A few years later my son and I got VIP seats for a Shuttle night launch. That was incredible.
The technology bug stuck with him. He manages an IT department in charge of internet security for an energy corporation.
Thanks, Glenn -- that brought back good memories. When my sons were young, we got into the fun of rocketry. I am glad to hear that some kids are still doing it. Beats video games.