The World's Safest Business

[Gus]

In reading Barbara Stine's reminiscences on the Quest Museum site (http://www.questaerospace.com/q_museum.asp) I saw mention of the article G. Harry had written for Mechanix Illustrated which prompted Orville Carlisle to contact him. Fortunately Mrs. Stine provided enough info about the article that I was able to locate a copy of the Mechanix Illustrated which contained the article.

The scans below are the cover of the Feb 1957 issue and the two pages of the article.

Enjoy.

[sandman]

OMG! I have that Unimat advertised on the last page!

[BEC]

You can certainly see the genesis of the NAR safety code in that article as well....something I'm going to try to imprint on my little class of 6-9th graders on Friday. Wish me luck :).

[cas2047]

Very interesting look back to the early days and an interesting article to boot. Thanks for posting Gus!

I found it fascinating that even way back when electronic ignition was suggested over other methods which apparently may have included using blasting caps. :eek:

[gpoehlein]

Yeah - I loved the bit about waiting an hour in case of misfire. Can you imagine if we had to do that at NARAM? ;)

Greg

[Jerry Irvine]

GH Stine:

1. Rockets are high explosive devices, all of them.

2. Do not expose rockets to heat over 125 degrees F, or to shock of handling or dropping. Heat can ignite propellants. Shocks can crack solid propellant grains . . .

3. When mixing solid propellants, do so by diluting them with water . . . .

Ummmmm . . . .


Thank goodness for polysulphide, polyurethane, and polybutadiene plastic binders, eh?

Double Base propellants are soooo old skewl.

Just Zinc-Sulfur user Jerry