It is with great sorrow I inform you of the passing of Dr. Frank Kosdon.



This Kosdon L630(L644) will be burned in his honor on May 7th.



Braden

__________________
Active rockets:
Extreme Darkstar(HPR)
BSD 4" Little John(HPR)
Ultimate Darkstar (HPR)
5.5 polecat NIKE smoke (HPR)
Retired:
Estes Mosquito (Mini Brute)
under construction:
L1 5.5" Standard ARM
RIP Erik Gates. Your talents will never be forgotten.

That's sad. I met him a few times at LDRS launches. A wild haired, roly-poly mad rocket scientist.

At the 92 LDRS, he set up, kinda without explicit permission, a big home-brew metal airframe O powered beast. Once it was on the pad, it was less trouble to launch than to transport. I was volunteering and helped clear people an extra few hundred feet away. And off it went! biggest model I'd personally seen fly.

very cool little story. That must have been one of his legandary O10000 flights.




Braden

__________________
Active rockets:
Extreme Darkstar(HPR)
BSD 4" Little John(HPR)
Ultimate Darkstar (HPR)
5.5 polecat NIKE smoke (HPR)
Retired:
Estes Mosquito (Mini Brute)
under construction:
L1 5.5" Standard ARM
RIP Erik Gates. Your talents will never be forgotten.

Yes, this is sad news.

Frank was his own person, no doubt. But, a brilliant guy who ran on a different level than many of us mere mortals of brain power compared to Frank. But, I never saw Frank try to be anyone other than who he was. I stuck a camera in his face many times for video interviews for my LDRS series of videos back when I still had the time (and much better family member health) to do those videos. He never hesitated to take the time to describe his latest creation and what he hoped to do with it.

I don't recall that specific '92 flight at LDRS (that would have been LDRS-11, the second Black Rock LDRS, of which the REALLY big flight that year was the Sackett, Ward, LaMothe 1200 pound "Down Right Ignorant" (THAT was a beast...). Come to think of it though, I think Frank did fly one or two of his M3700 birds at that LDRS, which were real neck-crackers on their own. There was some debate whether the well-defined 'crack' shortly after motor burnout was a small sonic boom or the motor burnout/shutdown.

Frank's O10,000 to M3700 two stage is on my LDRS-14 video, and that one screamed up to I forgot how high. But, that flight was somewhat overshadowed that year by the Sackett/Ward "Project 463", which was even bigger than the "Down Right Ignorant" of LDRS-11. LDRS-14 in '95 was a whopper of an event, man.

Gosh....I'd not thought of much of those memories in quite a while.

But Frank was one of a kind and never seemed to be intimidated in the least about putting his latest creation (generally something that burned bunches of propellant in unimagineable short durations!) on the pad and punching it off.


Fair Winds & Clear Skies, Frank.


Earl

__________________
Earl L. Cagle, Jr.
NAR# 29523
TRA# 962
SAM# 73
Owner/Producer
Point 39 Productions

Rocket-Brained Since 1970

Frank was a character, for ****ed sure. I spent endless hours with him on the phone when I was working on the original "Kosdon by AeroTech" motors back in 2001. He was an interesting, complicated, sometimes difficult, deliberately obtuse hell-of-a-guy.

Oh, and he made a good motor. I often wonder if I would've had to gumption to make EX motors had I not met the man.

God bless you Frank Kosdon.

His motors, in my opinion, are second to none. What is comparable to Fast propellent? Slow is great, and Dirty Harry puts out more smoke than an identical sized blackjack motor. If only there were somebody who could produce the motors. If I had the ability, I no doubt would.



Braden

__________________
Active rockets:
Extreme Darkstar(HPR)
BSD 4" Little John(HPR)
Ultimate Darkstar (HPR)
5.5 polecat NIKE smoke (HPR)
Retired:
Estes Mosquito (Mini Brute)
under construction:
L1 5.5" Standard ARM
RIP Erik Gates. Your talents will never be forgotten.

Sad news indeed. I remember the first time I saw his fast propellant in action; my jaw dropped.

Godspeed Mr. Kosdon, you certainly left your mark on hobby rocketry my friend.

Bob
TRA6797

Braden-

I always thought that his motors were great, but in reality, the propellant is very old school. Truth is, Kosdon pushed the envelope more in terms of geometry than propellant. Long grains (and motors), big cores, and designs that were pretty edgy were his big claim to fame.

Look at say the O-10000. Big, loud, fast, but the propellant...not great. ISP right around 200. And as for system ISP - sub-optimal. The burn rate really isn't that high either - the geometry is what made that motor run so fast. The last time I saw one run I had the motor/propellant experience to know that it wasn't a great motor overall as far as efficiency goes.

But it looked great !

About the man...

Frank was always cool to me. I bought some lukewarm cheap beers from him at the end of LDRS/Balls 95. They were in a cooler full of water that looked like 80% water/20% Black Rock dust.

Flew some of his "top-secret" high ISP propellants in my VBR Extreme 38 in '94...he would bring new versions of the stuff out and judge the ISP of the propellant by flying it in the same rocket/casing with different iterations of the propellant and judging ISP by altitude. This is not the industry standard, but it was fun for me and made me feel good. Cheaper than a test stand.

We conversed frequently 94-96, the era during which he and Mr. Irvine had some "legal difficulties". He had a particular pet name for Jerry, which I shall not share here (especially since I used the D work earlier and the system censored it) but suffice to say, it was colorful. I have no beef with J.I., in fact, I think his kits are classic. Anyhoo, he could carry on forever about "Pet Name" did this and "Pet Name" did that. And I'm thinkin, Jeez, man, I just want to know if you can tell me why my motor popped.

When we did the KBA project at AeroTech, it was extremely interesting for me to try and bring the Kosdon propellant into the AT manufacturing process. Frank's process was pure EX, I don't think he had any professional rocket experience at all. I never saw him cast fuel, but he told me that he just put the cast tube between his legs and "poured" away (bear in mind, this is southern CA - warm most the time). No doubt he was wearing his Dangerous Dave T Shirt and flourescent green shorts. Anyhow, the mix was thick and hard to cast compared to the AeroTech propellants, which are a dream to pour. And the burn rate on fast was never exactly right, reason being that Frank had some un-obtanium metal oxide burn rate catalyst that we never could get in the exact right micron size. But is was very close, and Frank was happy with seeing his name on the KBA reloads. Gary did a great job at honoring Frank's concept while making the product very well. Gary and Frank could have been enemies, but they were not, and Frank got paid royalties on all the KBA stuff.

He used to have this way screwed up old car...70's era, greenish-brown pukemobile. He would sell the zip-loc packaged reloads out of the back. There were no instructions. The delay times were completely random. When he bought the windstar it was a shock to all, as if he had suddenly become rich. Truth is, he had money. He just didn't care about it or what people might think. On evenings and weekends we would sell beer and soda on a nude beach (frequented by mostly gay men) near his house. Karl always called that "beers for queers" and I reckon Frank probably coined the phrase.

Mark Clark and Frank put together the Thunderbolt project. Mark helped frank immensely. Electronics, airframe streamlining, all that. The pre-Mark airframes looked like the drawings of a 14 year old. Frank was not a finesse guy.

They could put that somewhere on his tombstone - "Frank was not a finesse guy". The man would approve.

Again, Godspeed Frank!

Very Sad News !

I for one liked his "scofflaw" attitude toward certification and legal authorities regarding motors- we need MORE like him not less.

__________________
When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, and HAVOC !

Thanks for the historical perspective. From what little I knew, he seemed somewhat of an enigma.

Greg