There have been serveral threads lately which have mentioned the Estes Pro Series kits from the 1990s.

I thought it would be of interest to those who read this forum to provide some history about these rocket kits.

Please note that this is just 'MY' take on the history of these products. I apologise in advance for any errors, mistakes, omissions. Current/former Estes employees are welcome to post any information they have on this subject.

The Damon Company had purchased Estes Industries in 1969 and Centuri Engineering in 1970. This was at the height of the 'Space Race' with the Apollo moon landings. As public interest in the American space program declined, so did interest in model rocketry.

Centuri had a large model rocket division known as Enerjet. Enerjet motors used composite propellant to send hobby rockets higher then most rocketeers had ever seen. The Enerjet motors were expensive for their time, labor intensive to make and with the decline of the hobby, sales dropped.

The Enejet line was gone by 1976 with the remaining parts and components shipped to the Estes plant in Penrose, Colorado. There, Mike Dorffler and Ed Brown experimented with making composite motors using the leftover Enerjet materials but no production motors resulted from their efforts.

Estes was manufaturing large model rocket kits under the Maxi-Brute label but the last of those (Saturn V) was discontinued in 1986.

That appeared to be the end of Estes and their production of large model rocket kits but they were about to get a wake-up call...

(To be continued)

__________________
Bob
S.A.M. # 0014