CXST GoFast Rocket - A Story

I liked that. Not on par with that but my own similar blurb is stopping at a drinking establishment after a launch. As the usual banter begins the barkeep wanted to know why it'd been a good day for me (I'd launched my biggest bird on my biggest motor yet). "Oh, I've spent the day walking thru the muck firing Weapons of Mass Destruction."

Got alot better service but the barkeep found another customer to banter with.....

Chuck

Fred didn't get laid/dated. He just harassed a helpless spectator.

You merely engaged in banter.

Was it at least in a dirty glass? ; )

Randy

Pretty cool story Chuck. Ky called me tonite and verified that. (The license gig that is). You left out the part that Bruce Lee threw his credit card in, and after the launch and recovery, he used it at Bruno's, still worked, btw, after being in to space..

Plus Ky recovered an Aerotech 38mm motor case that went to space, plus a lot of other memorbilia, coins, letters, etc.

Me thinks he'll set em up in his museum, hell, I would too.

Congrats to the primary motor builder Derrick Deville, I'm jealous as hell, but proud of him as well..

The rest of the team, well, my hats off to ya...

Pat G

Subj: I went to Space today Date: 5/17/04 11:15:36 PM Central Daylight Time From: snipped-for-privacy@aol.com

Well, not me personally. But hear me out. After I finish, I could very well speculate that many of you took the ride we all have dreamed of today...

When I was a little boy, space fascinated me. President Kennedy told us all on TV that we as a "nation" were going "To land a man on the moon" by the end of the 60's." I was 6 years old at the time, and those were some pretty heady words for a young mind to comprehende. Sure, the Russians had put an object into space in the late 50's, and indeed, we had put a man into space May 5th, 1961, with a ship dubbed Freedom 7. But something was missing. "I" was not part of the "team". A "nation" was too broad a term to satisfy me, I wanted a closer tie, a direct knowledge, a "brotherhood", so to speak, to make me, however ambiguous, one of the "cogs in the wheel".

And so I dreamed. Conjuring up scenarios whereby "I" could become part of a team to "go to space". Many years passed. I never gave up hope of being a team member of such a lofty accomplishment, but frankly, it was looking grim.

You all have watched "October Sky". A tale of several young lads that had a dream of going to space. Indeed, I am fortunate to call QT Wilson a frequent friend who had the same dream as I did. But as he says, he was not part of a team that succeeded in penetrating "space" either. His boyhood friend Homer Hickham did become part of an Govt. organization that sent objects and men into space, but it was not the same as the dreams of the exuberance of youth. Homer was part of a vast org that realized a space goal, but he also was limited regarding his "hands on " experience of the original dream. And that was the "missing part", according to my conversations over many a beer with Quent, and a few with Homer.

But today was different. Today, your friends and mine, Tripoli members, sent an object into Space. They did not have government funding. They did not have huge corporate funding. But they tapped into "the cogs of the wheel". They learned from the efforts of the Tripoli "family" team. I don't care what your level of involvement is in rocketry. The fact is, if you fly rockets, from low power to amateur, your experience prods free enterprise, and free enterprise spawns business solutions to your needs, and enterprising individuals rush to fulfill the needs of the "family". From that families successes, and from their failures, Ky and his team harvested the lessons learned and climbed the ladder to success, that stairway to the stars that we have all dreamed of. And touched , before now, the unreachable, for me and you.

Tommorrow, the unreachable is no longer.. For today, thanks to the dreams of Francis Graham, Ken Good, Ky Michaelson and his team, Derrick Deville, Bruce Kelly, Bruce Lee, other CSXT members, and 10,000 past and present Tripoli members too numerous to mention,

We have just begun....

I am PROUD to be a member of this team...

Collectively, there are many more dreams ahead that will become reality.

I wonder what Francis was thinking back in the 60's? Perhaps the above?

Pat G

BTW..KY and Team.....WOW!!!

but we knew you could do it..

My only regrets is: Ky, I wished your Mom could have witnessed it. But ya know, I bet she is grinnin bigger than yore ole polish buddy at this point, cause she had a front row seat....