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A quiver of mostly-longer-than-two-meters rockets.
Half are of my own design.
Many of you have flown Estes rockets as youngsters; I certainly did. Well, the hobby has undergone a revolution recently. These rockets aren't kid's stuff -- the grey one can take a motor developing well over 100 lbs. (50 kg) of thrust and exceed a mile in altitude. Certain maniacs regularly exceed 35,000 feet with their rockets! The familiar Estes motors range in power rating from 1/2A to D; the total impulse (power) doubles with each letter rating. With proper certification, one can now purchase up to an N (!!!) motor. That's 1,024 times as powerful as an Estes D motor. You can think of your life as a movie; I like to think I could recast my movie with a few of these...
This is a wonderful hobby: It makes one acutely aware that we live in a free country. There are places in the world where you could start a war with just one of these puppies. While the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) takes a keen interest in who were are and what we're doing, it's all legal. Astonishingly, there was a recent relaxation in federal regulations governing legal flights: I can fly any of the rockets shown here with only a 24-48 hour notification -- not approval -- of the FAA. Man, it's great to live in America! I hope we can maintain this extraordinary freedom. The excellent safety record and self-regulatory practices of the hobbyists has allowed us to, so far.
I have a long-term project: To build a gyro-stabilized rocket with a radio-controlled parasail for recovery and a transmitting TV camera aboard. We'll link the video output to a VR head-mounted display for an immersive real-time VR experience of rocket flight. Seems like a fun idea, no? "We have the technology..."
I'm sort of watching over the shoulders of the Burning Man Rocket Project
members.
(I created this image for their publicity purposes.)
The goal of this project is to put the first amateur satellite in low Earth
orbit at the Burning Man event in '97.
"Watch out below!"
In recent years I've taken to building my own rocket motors, from black powder bottle
rockets to a reloadable, composite propellant L motor.
The latter I built in a class sponsored by the
Reaction Research Society.
These guys build some SERIOUS rokets and rocket motors.
The design of the one we built in the class is a scaled-down version of the one they
sent into space.
They're a great and generous bunch of guys.
Very serious about their rocketry, which is more than you can say for
some of my rocket-friends and colleagues. ;-)
Of course, nowadays I spend nearly all my time "building my own rocket ship:"
Mojoworld!
As my pal
Chas
says: "EARTH: WE MUST GET OFF."
