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  #1  
Old 01-14-2014, 05:53 AM
Jerry Irvine's Avatar
Jerry Irvine Jerry Irvine is offline
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Default Model Rocket Pre-History!

Model Rocket Pre-History.

It is generally accepted that model rocketry was started by Carslile and Estes and Stine. While that is true for what evolved into NAR and what we know today in terms of commercial suppliers, there was a pre-history.

Remember first model rockets included making your own motor until it became possible to buy one, and more importantly they were readily available by mail-order.

In this April 1954 Popular Mechanics article, reference is made to hobby rockets, as compared to semi-professional amateur rockets!

http://books.google.com/books?id=Nd...nepage&q&f=true

Quote:
Originally Posted by April 1954 Popular Mechanics, "With the amateur - but serious - rocketeers out on the Mojave desert, it's Fourth of July the year around." By Shep Shepherd. pp. 81-85.
The PRS builds small, functional rockets, but they are not model-building hobbiests. The rockets they build may not travel as high as the Vikings, but they will travel as fast and as accurately. The purpose of the society is to "promote study and active research and to disseminate information in the fields of rocketry and space travel." They design and build rockets, fly them and study the results to see if they performed as expected and if not, why not. And when they build another rocket that will outperform the previous one, solve new problems and test new theories.
In a subsequent correction/amendment letter to the editor, the RRS wrote in part:

Quote:
Originally Posted by 1954 Popular Mechanics, letter to the editor, by Arthur Louis Joquel II
The micrograin propellant, mentioned in the article as "a type developed for use in military rockets" was actually discovered by two members of the Reaction Research Society, George James and John Cipperly, in 1943 and has never been used by the military in any way. Its low cost and ease of handling have made it an excellent solid propellant for the civilian rocket societies to whom the RRS has made the formula available without restriction or charge.
They make reference to activities conducted between 1943 and 1953 in the 1954 magazine.

Pre-Historical Jerry!

cite:
http://www.v-serv.com/usr/images/Po...hanics-1954.pdf
8mb PDF!

I wonder if this goes into the pin-up girl thread too?


Last edited by Jerry Irvine : 01-14-2014 at 06:56 AM.
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Old 01-14-2014, 05:47 PM
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Randy Randy is offline
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Interesting. Good to know they had the ladies involved even then.

Randy
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  #3  
Old 01-14-2014, 07:49 PM
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Jerry Irvine Jerry Irvine is offline
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The article makes reference to George James who acted as the default lobbiest in DC for rocketry, hobby-model, and amateur-semipro (ARS, PRS, RRS, MIT, CIT, JPL) for several decades (1940-2000). It was his efforts that greased the wheels for Harry and the other folks leaning on regulations. We all owe a debt of gratitude to George James.

Last edited by Jerry Irvine : 01-14-2014 at 08:06 PM.
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Old 01-14-2014, 08:15 PM
Fireman Fireman is offline
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Thanks for posting this! The RRS broke the ground for our hobby. It is great to see a reference to them.

I have a basement full of old Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Mechanics Illustrated, and simiar magazines from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Several of them mention the RRS. I have seen pictures of their range and other pictures of this tower, but I have never come across this particular article before. Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. Every article, every photo from those early days of rocketry is like striking gold for those of us with a historic bent.

Now I need to go check the antique stores to try to find a copy of this particular issue!

The posted picture is great! I may be older than dirt, but I can still appreciate a photo of a pair of fine looking rockets like these. Yessir! Fine looking rockets!

The Fireman
formerly NAR 2217,
Peak City Section 2
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Old 01-14-2014, 10:05 PM
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Earl Earl is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fireman

The posted picture is great! I may be older than dirt, but I can still appreciate a photo of a pair of fine looking rockets like these. Yessir! Fine looking rockets!

The Fireman
formerly NAR 2217,
Peak City Section 2



There were rockets in that photo?


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  #6  
Old 01-15-2014, 06:52 AM
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Jerry Irvine Jerry Irvine is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fireman
Thanks for posting this! The RRS broke the ground for our hobby. It is great to see a reference to them.

I have a basement full of old Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Mechanics Illustrated, and simiar magazines from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Several of them mention the RRS.
If you can give me dates I can research them and bring them to the magic of the internet for all the little kids to see for a decade into the future. The thing about the past is most of it is NOT on the internet. I got on the internet IIRC in 1992, after the majority of model rocket history had happened. The following era was HPR (started by me in 1978 and adopted by TRA/NAR in 1984-6).

I think USR was the first rocket company with a website. I was playing with html (and email and FTP) and said, "I can do this!"

Jealous of your NAR numbers . . . .

NAR 24333
Polaris section 193 (after NAR added 100 to all section numbers)
TRA 012 founder
Lucerne Test Range Prefecture #007 founder.

Coulda had a lower number but I asked for a license to kill!

Last edited by Jerry Irvine : 01-15-2014 at 01:54 PM.
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Old 01-18-2014, 01:06 AM
Fireman Fireman is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jerry Irvine
If you can give me dates I can research them and bring them to the magic of the internet for all the little kids to see for a decade into the future. The thing about the past is most of it is NOT on the internet. I got on the internet IIRC in 1992, after the majority of model rocket history had happened. The following era was HPR (started by me in 1978 and adopted by TRA/NAR in 1984-6).

I think USR was the first rocket company with a website. I was playing with html (and email and FTP) and said, "I can do this!"

Jealous of your NAR numbers . . . .

NAR 24333
Polaris section 193 (after NAR added 100 to all section numbers)
TRA 012 founder
Lucerne Test Range Prefecture #007 founder.

Coulda had a lower number but I asked for a license to kill!




Jerry,

My magazines, like most of my old rocket stuff, are in storage in Colorado Springs while I am working in the Midwest, so I don't have access to most of that information right now. Next time I get home, I will look them up and try to get the info to you. I would love to see them on the internet so a new generation (and an old generation as well) can see them.

The article refered to above from PM (I finally stopped looking at the picture long enough to READ the article.) Man, talk about hard-core rocketry! A rocket propelled by liquid oxygen and thiakol rubber? Good heavens! That was a different world from the one we now know, and no mistake. Sometimes I wonder how I ever got to be this old. Oh, I guess I got to be this old by not dieing sooner...

Other than fiction, like October Skies, do you know if there has ever been a definnitive history written about those early, pre-NAR amature rocket days?

The Fireman
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  #8  
Old 01-15-2014, 02:36 PM
Jerry Irvine's Avatar
Jerry Irvine Jerry Irvine is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fireman
The RRS broke the ground for our hobby.
Estes (Vern) threw them under the bus, HARD.
He personally did the same thing with "sparkies".

Let's at least be historically accurate.

cites:

http://www.oldrocketforum.com/archi...php/t-2448.html

http://rocketry.wordpress.com/2008/11/

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!t...ets/1y3iy33omto

Read those carefully. ATF has since gone against igiters, so we have "starters". They used to be exempt per 55.141(a)(7). As was all Class C (UN 1.4).

http://www.v-serv.com/usr/motors/g68f.html

Last edited by Jerry Irvine : 01-16-2014 at 04:47 PM.
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  #9  
Old 01-16-2014, 11:02 AM
Daddyisabar Daddyisabar is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jerry Irvine
Estes (Vern) threw them under the bus, HARD.
He personally did the same thing with "sparkies".

Let's at least be historically accurate.


I have heard a lot of this from cranky old Denver area rocketeers. All the "he screwed me and didn't pay for this and that, or this or that blew up and had to skedaddle here or there, or this or that was stolen," and on and on and on. I just chalk it up to a bunch of sour grapes, hearsay and that maybe someone was a better businessman and Capitalist and got things done. I want my model rocket history to be Happy-Happy-Happy, draped in Glory and mystique. We need or Hero's, our October Sky movie creation myths. I need to look at the photo of Vern with his Klingon beard in the '74 catalog and release those happy, inner child memories. If some little people got trampled over and left in the dust bin of History by the strong then so be it, that's the way things are. Who cares if Thomas Edison might have out flanked Hiram Maxim on the incandescent light bulb, Hiram's later inventions made the world a better place.
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  #10  
Old 01-14-2014, 08:32 PM
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Joe Wooten Joe Wooten is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jerry Irvine
Model Rocket Pre-History.

It is generally accepted that model rocketry was started by Carslile and Estes and Stine. While that is true for what evolved into NAR and what we know today in terms of commercial suppliers, there was a pre-history.

Remember first model rockets included making your own motor until it became possible to buy one, and more importantly they were readily available by mail-order.

In this April 1954 Popular Mechanics article, reference is made to hobby rockets, as compared to semi-professional amateur rockets!

http://books.google.com/books?id=Nd...nepage&q&f=true

In a subsequent correction/amendment letter to the editor, the RRS wrote in part:

They make reference to activities conducted between 1943 and 1953 in the 1954 magazine.

Pre-Historical Jerry!

cite:
http://www.v-serv.com/usr/images/Po...hanics-1954.pdf
8mb PDF!

I wonder if this goes into the pin-up girl thread too?



She's roughly the same age as my mother.....
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