Originally Posted by stefanj

RIP Irv.

An important innovator; maybe someone else would have invented composite model rocket motors, but he introduced them just a dozen or so years after the hobby started.

I have one second-hand Irv Wait anecdote, told to me by Al Andrake. (This is from a 28 year old discussion, so excuse my phrasing.)

When Wait was brought into Centuri, the company was having reliability problems with its big BP "Mini-Max" motors.

The were made in a press with three cylinders. The powder was pressed by a hydraulically driven piston until a certain compression was reached. Wait noted that only one of the cylinders had an actual strain guage (?). When it was triggered all three pistons stopped pressing. He pointed out that this could mean that the motors in two of the three cylinders could receive insufficient packing. Add gauges to each, and the pistons all delivered the proper pressure.