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

Imagine if model rocket engines _hadn't_ come to existence in that "window of opportunity" and think of the regulatory stuff they would face if someone tried to introduce them as a "newly developed product" these days...

-dave w

Dave W. wrote:

You wouldn't need them, just label all items: "aircraft parts".

JD

And someone like Fred making it a personal agenda to keep it out.

Only for you "Big Fine", your special. Untill I get my H-160's your f%#ked. Anything new to report?? (:-)

Fred

I have a hard time imagining this alternate reality of yours, Dave. It's just not feasable. History didn't go this way because boys back then didn't have enough money to buy a safe motor making kit. A safe kit couldn't use a cheap mixer that could potentially catch fire and cause a propellant fire. If a kit like you describe did get marketed, it would soon come off the market because of the injuries, and evolution would have continued with commercially (safe) manufactured Estes motors.

steve

Simply not true. No company felt like offering it. Supply creates its own demand.

The Estes model was the "razor blade model" with all expendables value added focused in Penrose.

Dave's scenario is practical. And more importantly is instructive as to the political whims that led us by the nose (through the 70's and 80's) to where we are today. To deny that is to miss the entire point.

We have "will" (self-regulation) going forward. The only question is, who's "will" will prevail?

Just Jerry

I fear the winners will be the very club members who just love rules, gatekeeping, and added laws.

(read Benedict Arnolds)

Bill Stine talked about this at NARCON 2004, and answered your questions. If you can find someone who went, they'll have gotten a CD with video of that talk (I belive; I haven't looked at it myself).

In The Begining, model rocketry was illegal: it violated many if not all states' fire codes. G. Harry Stine went to the NFPA to draft model codes making model rocketry legal. It took 30 years to get all 50 states to adopt that model code as law.

What that led G. Harry to form a company with Orvile Carslile to manufacture motors was what he had called the "Teenage Rocketry Problem": there were many people (including but not only teenagers) who were trying to build their own rocket motors. Many of those experiments lead to injury and death. States were starting to talk about enacting more laws to prevent this from happening, and those laws would squash everything that later became known as model rocketry. This is what drove the "leave the motor making to the profesionals" tone of the regulations.

Today we're the beneficiary of the work of people like G. Harry, yet we post hatred torwards him & them here on RMR monthly.

The fire codes despised here, NFPA 1122 & 1127, applies to individuals. The specificly do not interfere with corporations (NFPA 1125 does that ;-) If you want to make your own motors, form a parternship with others in your area and incorporate a company whose purpose is to research rocket propultion. You'll have other codes to contend with, but this will permit a clean end-run around NFPA 1122 & 1127. And, mabye one day you can join the Motor Manufacturer Monopoly and overcharge the rest of us for mixed chemicals.

Glen Overby Twin Cities, MN

No. Never.

The language is written mostly recently and mostly by the CURRENT sport rocket caucus sans GH Stine.

Wouldn't it be easier to just sit around and gripe about it here on the net, ala Irvine and Weinershaker?

steve

Well yes, that would be *easier*. But easier doesn't always make it better :)

Ted 'still looking for that perfect KN03/magAL/epoxy mix' Novak TRA#5512 IEAS#75

From first hand experience, definitely YES!!!

Jerry

No, it's better too.

The only motor partnerships ever (Rocketflite and Powertech were severe failures and highly counterproductive.

Really? Wasn't that mostly before fireworks became widely illegal (hmm. It would have been close, timewise.) You'd have a hard time convincing me that model rockets were ever more illegal than fireworks rockets in any given location...

BillW

That's an account of an incident involving compressed nitrous oxide bottles becoming included in a structure fire, and releasing their gas. It is not relevant to the question of whether it would have been historically feasible to develop safe means for "hobby-scale" preparation of APCP, the makings for which would present no greater fire hazard than an equivalent quantity of finished propellant.

-dave w

A bit extreme (which is what was needed) but I do generally agree.

Tripoli has led the way toward this in opposition to its mission.

Jerry

You had your chance: Now sit down and shut up; unless you have new information to share with the group..

Fred

Not true. PADs are exempt from regulation.

They don't need to. They just need to follow the law.

"This means that unless and until BATFE properly promulgates a rule rescinding the 1994 PADs exemption, fully assembled rocket motors are propellant actuated devices under the law and are exempt from regulation by BATFE."

Joel.