amateur motor manufacture - what's really wrong with it? [religious heresy / alternate history speculation?]

It's not legal. Once you start selling motors, you are no longer "amateur", you are commercial and then you have to conform the regs governing commercial manufacture.

Just my 2 cents...

I think it would have been a lot different. If things had continued along the then current course, where a significant number of people were getting injured each year, I think rocketry would have been banned completely. When model rocketry came along, most of the people who shouldn't have been building their own motors in the first place, switched over to MR . This greatly reduced the number of accidents and acted as a relief valve to take the pressure off amateur rocketry.

The result is that today we can enjoy amateur rocketry, model rocketry or both because both are still legal. IMHO, I think it is best to keep things classified separately, i.e. model rocketry, high power rocketry and amateur rocketry. My reason is simple, I don't want to see one category of rocketry killed when the target was really something else. For example, don't kill model rocketry if your goal is to regulate high power rocketry.

A certain number of rules are going to be required for our hobby, and the NFPA is as good a place as any to originate those rules. That said, I think some of the rules need to be revisited once we get past the current BATF problems.

Mario Perdue NAR #22012 Sr. L2 for email drop the planet

"X-ray-Delta-One, this is Mission Control, two-one-five-six, transmission concluded."

Which in this case is an EXEMPTION!

That is in effect an executive summary of the actions of the model rocketry faction on the NFPA sport rocket caucus. Folks like Dane Boles and Mary Roberts of Estes, G Harry, Pat Miller of NAR, etc. HPR folks were represented but decidedly in the minority.

It takes YEARS to revisit them. I suggest starting NOW.

Yes, if amateur rocketry was the only legal form of rocketry, that would have significantly altered the regulatory landscape, and vastly reduced the size of the hobby. Most adults don't _want_ to make their own motors, and most kids aren't capable of doing it safely.

If making your own motors was -- by regulation -- the only legal form of hobby rocketry, it would likely find itself restricted by those regulations to specific propellents, proven formulas, maybe even user training/certification requirements.

david: good questions and speculation.......

once a person starts "selling" his amateur produced rocket motors, he becomes a commercial entity and is required to follow all applicable local,state and federal laws, as they themselves define and interpret them....

for example our arch nemesis, the BATFE, has pronounced that manufacture for your own use, does not require a LEMP....they have not pronounced(yet), that mere possession of the home brewed manufacture of APCP requires NO LEUP....as I said yet....I'm sure that once that close all loopholes vis a vis commercial sports rocketry they will turn their attention to AR.....

If you take the BATFE at their word that APCP is indeed a controlled explosive substance, then I fully expect them to say that if you make it, it requires a LEUP just to home brew it ..... I mean there is no practical difference between commercially made APCP which requires an LEUP according to the BATFE, versus a person at home making his own APCP.....APCP is APCP and according to the BATFE, its explosive and therefore they can control it......

If a person is manufacturing his own amateur rocket motors for his own personal use, then its something different.....

your revisionist historical question about what if APCP had been available back in 1957 part of a kit for amateurs probably would have sold very well due to safety and other concerns.....

If you prefer amateur rocketry to commercial hobby rocketry then by all means do it...

shockie B)

That's as things are now... Suppose that the early development had been on a system by which people _could_ safely ane easily make their own motors?

That's the "alternate history" question I'm raising here...

-dave w

There is no "alternate history", history is a record of what HAS transpired, not what you wish had transpired.

What if superman had been a nazi?

What's your point? I am engaging in speculation about how weird it is that things happened the way they did, and how they could have happened a bit differently!

(Feel free to join in or not - anybody's welcome to do either, even you and Fred and Phil and Jerry and Ray - but don't just sit on the sidelines calling me "little jerry" and otherwise throwing verbal spitballs. I've been fairly patient so far, less out of regard for you than out of a reluctance to scare the horses with some of the things I've been tempted to post...)

-dave w

Hurry up and post them, they will slide right off Brian Teeling with no effect.

In Canada its so difficult to get large motors at a good price, I cant even find motors bigger than a D around here. I have been making motors for

13 years, back then I could get a 3 pack of C's for $4.95, now their $11.99. I can make 4 G-75 for less than that.

I doubt you have anything to say that would remotely scare this horse..

Fred

I think you may be right Ray. Most of the MDRA rocketeers do not make their motors, but chose to purchase commercial motors. Although I make most all of my larger motors, 54 mm and above, I still purchase an occasional larger commercial motor and, with few exceptions, all 38 mm and below I use are commercial.

Fred

before cspe didn't kids reload ammo in the 50s ?

by the general public and authorities as an activity for children. "Children", eh? Wow, three for three.

Have you set up a strawman manufacturing facility in your garage? Or is it cheaper to buy them than make them? :-)

There isn't. Tell anybody who thinks so to eat a ....(fill in the blank).

Pax

Why would you need a mixer?, what's involved in this mixture making?

TBerk clueless am I, am I

In the 50s you used to be able to buy all sorts of "experiment kits" with various chemicals that there's no way you could market to kids now. That included nifty things like radioactive materials.

Forget the mixer; for motors that small, it's hardly worth the effort, and it would increase the cost tremendously. An accurate digital scale would be much more appropriate, and more necessary.

Now, that said, assuming such a beast existed back in the 1950s, I highly doubt it would be on the market today. Not only has the market changed dramatically, but the potential liability issues would be large. Not to mention that local fire departments (remember, fire departments make up a good portion of NFPA) would have an absolute fit over it.

-Kevin