Originally Posted by JStarStar

Vern Estes and to some extent G. Harry Stine catch a lot of heat on some forums for allegedly heavy-handed tactics in steering model rocketry in the 1960s toward their own personal vision, which some consider overly regimented and safety-obsessive.

The only problem with that is if the sport had continued its 1950s/"October Sky" direction from the days of Sputnik and into the space-obsessed Sixties, there would have been a huge number of additional kids, most not really all that competent, mixing up propellant in their basements and producing mushroom clouds in their garages.

Which mainly would have resulted in a lot of additional laws and regulations (think CA rocketry laws on steroids) all over the country and for most of us the only rockets we would have gotten to launch would have been water-bottle rockets.

It's probably better that HPR and EX did not make major advancements until the 1980s or so, by which time most of the goofy kids from the Sixties were in their 30s or so and their first instinct in terms of building a rocket was not to go down to the basement and try to mix 5 pounds of propellant in Mom's fondue kit.

It's probably better that that subdivision of the sport developed when the majority of people taking it up for the first time were likely to be adults who had had some interest in the subject matter for a good number of years.