Explosive Debate: Should U.S. Check Up On Model Rockets?

[R. A. Hettinga]

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB108388303399504572,00.html>

The Wall Street Journal

      May 7, 2004

 PAGE ONE


Explosive Debate:
 Should U.S. Check Up
 On Model Rockets?
Under 9/11 Law, ATF Keeps
 Tabs on Propellant Buyers;
 Feds Visit Al's Hobby Shop

By ROBERT BLOCK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 7, 2004; Page A1


ELMHURST, Ill. -- Al's Hobby Shop in this leafy corner of suburban Chicago
is always packed with mothers looking for Cub Scout badges, teenagers
ogling imported slot cars and grown men playing with model trains.

But to federal law-enforcement officials, Al's is also a possible terrorist
supply depot. And so, last October, a special agent from the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was sent to Al's from Washington
to buy $1,700 in model rocket motors.

"The guy told me that the government wanted to do some tests," recalls Tim
Lehr, who sold the agent 40 motors containing almost 60 pounds of
propellant. "He wouldn't say what the tests were for, but I could guess:
The government wanted to ruin my hobby."

Since the passage of the initial post-9/11 antiterrorism laws in October
2001, hobby rocketry has been struggling to avoid regulation that
enthusiasts say will destroy their sport, deter youngsters from pursuing an
interest in science and waste the nation's limited law-enforcement
resources. The Department of Justice says that federal agents need to keep
an eye on who is buying model rockets because the toys are potentially
dangerous and could be adapted by terrorists to attack airplanes and
American soldiers.


At the heart of the problem is a long-running dispute between hobbyists and
the ATF, which is part of the Justice Department, over how to legally
classify the chemicals used to propel rockets. Ammonium perchlorate
composite propellant, better known as APCP, is a rubbery mixture of resins,
powdered metals and salts that ignites at 500 degrees Fahrenheit and burns
like a road flare on steroids. It's the same fuel that the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration uses in the solid rocket boosters on
the space shuttle.

For hobby rockets, APCP comes in the form of pellets wrapped in cardboard
about an inch in diameter and three inches long. The cylinders, which start
at $12.50 apiece and can go up into the hundreds of dollars, can be stacked
in reusable aluminum casings to power larger rockets.

Rocketeers have always maintained that APCP doesn't detonate, it
deflagrates. That is, it burns intensely at a controlled rate. Since 1971,
however, the ATF has branded APCP as a "low explosive" subject to
regulation and licensing by the bureau. In practice, the ATF largely
ignored the rocketeers as long as they weren't selling or buying APCP
across state lines.

With new fears about national security after 9/11, President Bush signed
the Safe Explosives Act, an antiterrorism law contained in the bill that
created the Department of Homeland Security. In effect for a year, the law
now requires permits for all purchases of rocket motors and all explosives,
including APCP.

Suddenly, hobbyists who had been freely purchasing such motors for years
had to be fingerprinted and to submit to background checks. They had to pay
$25 for ATF low-explosive-user permits to purchase more than 2.5 ounces of
APCP and allow local and federal inspectors onto their property anytime to
check for proper storage of the propellant.

The government insists it is trying to balance civil liberties with
homeland safety. But federal investigators say that since terrorists showed
they could level skyscrapers with boxcutters, no potentially suspicious
activity can be ignored. "Most of the people involved in these activities
are harmless fanatics and nerds," says one federal law-enforcement
official. "But since 9/11, we have a responsibility to make sure the nerds
are not terrorists."

Other hobbyist have also come under federal scrutiny, including bird
watchers on the Canadian border and operators of radio-controlled
airplanes. But this does little to console the rocketeers. Terry McCreary,
associate professor of analytical chemistry at Murray State University in
western Kentucky and a hobby-rocket guru, says sport rocketry helps kids by
interesting them in wonders of chemistry, physics, astronomy and
aerodynamics. "If you look deeply into the background of our top
mathematicians and scientists, you will find a kid with a model rocket."

Pointing at a troop of about 15 Boy Scouts at a recent launch in The
Plains, Va., Doug Pratt, who runs his own hobby-rocket business out of his
basement in Herndon, asked: "Does that look like a group of terrorists to
you?"

Faced with the prospect of being fingerprinted and having agents poking
around their past, many rocketeers are leaving the hobby. The rocket club
at Kettering University in Michigan has closed down because of the new
regulatory requirements.

Looking for help, rocket groups have turned to Republican Sen. Mike Enzi of
Wyoming, an avid fan of hobby rockets and model airplanes. In May last
year, Senator Enzi sponsored a bill to exempt hobby rockets from government
regulation.

The Department of Justice, which oversees the ATF, then wrote him a letter
saying that "large rocket motors could be adapted by terrorists for use in
surface-to-air missiles capable of intercepting commercial and military
airplanes at cruise level and for use in 'light antitank' weapons capable
of hitting targets from a range of nearly five miles."

Mr. Enzi wrote back to Attorney General Ashcroft, asking to see the results
of the tests that led his department to its conclusions. Within weeks, an
agent from the ATF was sent to Al's Hobby Shop outside Chicago to buy the
first rocket motors for testing. Over the past six months, according to ATF
officials, agents and private contractors have been working at Air Force
bases in Utah and Florida firing model rockets at drones, vehicles and
simulated crowds of people. The tests are classified.

Some rocketeers have hit upon another solution: They make their own fuel.
They get together on weekends with pizza, beer and jars of precursor
chemicals for "cooking parties" in their homes and apartments or in the
back rooms of their businesses.

"It's legal and completely safe," says Jerry O'Sullivan, an insurance agent
who cooks fuel with his friends in suburban Washington. Mr. O'Sullivan, who
is a member of the Maryland Delaware Rocketry Association Inc., is taking
advantage of a loophole in explosives legislation exempting anyone who
mixes an explosive for his own "personal" use from having to get a permit.
The exemption was created mainly for farmers who mix fertilizers and fuel
oil to blast their own irrigation ditches.

One oddity of the government crackdown is the focus on rockets and not
guidance systems. "The secret is in the guidance systems," says Arthur
"Trip" Barber, a former captain of a U.S. navy guided missile destroyer,
who is now vice president of the National Association of Rocketry. "I can
build a rocket overnight but I couldn't build a guidance system in a
lifetime."


-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'