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Old 10-02-2008, 02:54 PM
luke strawwalker's Avatar
luke strawwalker luke strawwalker is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Needville and Shiner, TX
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Quote:
Originally Posted by joecool
i've got another answer - it's called ignorant and too lazy to get educated. if it was just greed they would bring back the centuri catalog - 1000's of BARs would be tripping over themselves to get these kits at any reasonable price, and they'd spark a new interest in the younger crowd who haven't ever seen this kind of exciting design.


I've just finished reading all the Centuri catalogs over at http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/rockets/rockets.html and from what I saw of the their lineup (Centuri was before my time but I had older friends who were VERY loyal to Centuri) other than the licensed products like the Evel Knievel, Space 1999, and Buck Rogers ships, most of their more interesting stuff, like their early 70's space shuttle (back when it was based on Max Faget's design with straight wings and fully reusable liquid flyback booster, before the Air Force partnership forced it to become delta winged), is available from Semroc...

As for what Shreadvector said, yes, technically correct, but like joecooler I don't personally care about all the business semantics of who really owns who and 'they did this for that tax benefit' and all that jazz... go read the last Centuri catalog, it's a complete departure from their previous catalogs, virtually identical to the Estes Catalog of the same time period, obviously produced by the same printer, and the following year the Centuri products disappeared. You can't buy a Centuri ANYTHING that was manufactured after 1983, so for most of us in the unwashed masses, we equate that with being 'out of business' or absorbed since 83. Estes DOES still use SOME old Centuri size stuff (BT-56 being the most notable one that comes to mind). Estes is still producing stuff under their name, even though they're owned by Cox or whatever. Cox also used to make model rockets, but are 'gone' now too, in that there aren't any Cox branded MR products anymore. Estes also bought up North Coast Rocketry, which was a pretty big name in M/HPR back in the late 80's (when I was in high school us rocket nerds LOVED their catalogs because they had some HOT chicks displaying their rockets Estes bought them out after I was out of rocketry in tech school, but from what I've read Estes didn't keep the NCR products going for too long before they 'faded away' too.

Sorry tbzep if I'm long winded... sometimes too much information to convey, and I've been trained to be very precise in my communication..

OL JR

PS. I'd add Dr. Zooch to that list of cottage industry innovators that has the 'old Estes spirit" lacking in the big corporate world... OL JR
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