NYT: A Cult of Backyard Rocketeers Keeps the Solid Fuel Burning

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/14/science/14rocket.html?_r=1&ei=5094&en=9a7ce
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A Cult of Backyard Rocketeers Keeps the Solid Fuel Burning
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Brad Wright of Redmond, Wash., carries his rocket to the launch pad. More
Photos >

By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
Published: October 14, 2006

GERLACH, Nev. b Wedge Oldham, a 49-year-old software engineer from Los
Angeles, finds nothing sweeter than spending a fall weekend in the Black Rock
desert, barking rocket launching commands like b
Are we good to go?b
 into
the hot dusty wind.
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Peter Ekstrom, fingers crossed, as rocket left a trail of smoke. More Photos
B;

Nerves jangling, he awaits the moment when Carpe Diem, his homemade
18-foot-long rocket, hurls itself heavenward with 737 pounds of thrust,
shockwaves b or b
mach diamondsb
 b surging from its supersonic exhaust.
With dazed exuberance he watches it recede into deep blue sky, and then, with
the release of parachutes, gently drift four miles away, preserved for another
flight.

At a cultural moment when billionaires like Paul G. Allen, the Microsoft
co-founder, and Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Atlantic chairman, are getting
into the space business, the members of the Tripoli Rocketry Association are
the ultimate do-it-yourselfers b backyard versions of Burt Rutan, the
legendary engineer of the first privately financed manned rocket.

>From Florham Park, N.J., and as far away as London, 100 launchers came b
plumbers, paint contractors, firefighters, bankers and Silicon Valley techies
united by their passion for building rockets capable of blasting 94,000 feet
into the air, at nearly three-and-one-half times the speed of sound, as one
record-setter did this weekend.

Members of a gonzo subculture, the hobbyists have been known to launch Weber
grills, Port-A-Potties, bowling balls and pink flamingos. But once a year, on
this bleak, 400-square-mile dry lake bed, they meet for the Indy 500 of
rocketry, with waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration.

This year, the subculture itself is on the defensive, unsure whether it will
soar or come crashing down in a b
catob
 b lingo for a catastrophic
failure. Since Sept. 11, the rocketeers, about 6,000 nationwide, have had to
contend with tougher restrictions from the federal government and local fire
marshals, and are involved in a seven-year-old dispute with the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives over their use of a propellant.

Bearing names like Questionable Mental Health and the Procrastinator, their
rockets are usually restricted to low-altitude launchings from sorghum fields
in Kansas, sod farms in South Carolina and frozen Lake Champlain in winter.

b
A lot of guys close their eyes and see women. I close my eyes and see
rockets,b
 said Ky Michaelson, 68, a junior high school drop-out from
Bloomington, Minn., who has been called b
the sultan of thrustb
 by Outside
Magazine.

Mr. Michaelson shot the first amateur rocket into space, and his inventions
include a rocket-powered sled that zooms uphill. His record-breaking launching
was 72 miles up, at 3,420 miles per hour b factoids embroidered on his
rocket-red satin shirt.

Like many of his brethren, Mr. Michaelson developed his passion early with a
chemistry set he got for Christmas. He graduated to launching rocket cars in
an alley in southern Minneapolis, and today he fills his home with space
collectibles, including a hand-held toilet from the Russian space station
Mir.

The talk in Nevada was technical minutiae b thrust ratios, fuel efficiency,
altitudes. Even over a ravioli dinner at Brunobs Country Club and Casino,the
hobbyists were constantly gesturing in an upward trajectory, forks in hand.

The apogee of the weekend is when they push the button launching creations
that teams have spent up to a year making at a cost of thousands of dollars.

b
Every time I launch a rocket, a little of me goes up with it,b
 said Derek
Stavenger, a 50-year-old painter from San Francisco. b
Itbs about escaping
the bounds of our restrictive existence on the planet.b


Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the extreme rocketeers have seen their ranks
dwindle. In many parts of the country, rockets are prohibited. Local groups
face a welter of ordinances and safety codes, as well as F.A.A. restrictions.
Tripoli extreme rocketeers also need federal low-explosives permits. On
Tuesday, lawyers representing Tripoli and the National Association of Rocketry
and officials of the firearms bureau will head to Federal District Court in
Washington to resolve the seven-year-old dispute over the hobbyistsb use of
a flammable propellant, ammonium perchlorate composite, or APCP. The chemical
is the main ingredient on the space shuttlebs solid rocket boosters.

The firearms bureau classifies APCP as an explosive and, amid post-Sept. 11
security concerns, requires that anyone who uses more than two ounces of
propellant undergo federal background checks.

b
If I was an 18-year-old and told my mom I needed a low explosives permit
and that an A.T.F. agent would come to my house, shebd say, Why donbt you
just continue with your guitar lessons?b
 grumbled Ken Good, the president of
Tripoli and a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland.

Rocketeers say the agency has no right to regulate the propellant because it
does not explode but rather b
deflagrates,b
 or burns intensely at a
controlled rate, like a road flare.

The agency is also concerned that large rockets could be used as weapons. But
weapons experts say it is doubtful that the rockets could be significant
threats because they do not have guidance systems, which are prohibited by
federal law.

b
Designing a rocket to go straight up and down is hugely different than
making it controllable to hit any kind of a target,b
 said John Hansman, a
professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

Still, the unpredictable does happen. With a spectacular kaboom, an elegantly
minimalist rocket designed by Alex McLaughlin, 29, a software engineer from
Portland, Ore., broke apart at around 40,000 feet, the hobby rocket equivalent
of the Death Zone on Mount Everest.

It is an unforgiving hobby, but it is arguably safer for participants than in
the past. Like many of the Black Rock b
rocket ratsb
 b largely men of a
certain age b Mike Mullane, 61, a retired space shuttle astronaut, recalled
his boyhood rocketry experiments with black powder and other dangerous
substances. Mr. Mullane said he was b
rebornb
 the day Sputnik was launched
in 1957. b
It was the 9/11 of my childhood, a blow to the American ego,b
 he
said.

The horizon was soon populated with rocket and moon clubs, with schools
b
passing out formulas for rocket fuel,b
 he said. Before the arrival of
Estes rocket kits, b
the only game in town was getting a steel tube, mixing
hazardous material and lighting fuses in the desert,b
 an activity, he said,
that was far riskier than three flights on the space shuttle.

On Oct. 20, 60 members of Tripoli will launch high-powered rockets at the
first X Prize Cup in Las Cruces, N.M., in an expo that bills itself as b
the
worldbs first space show.b
 The X Prize Foundation of Santa Monica, Calif.,
richly rewards private space innovation. The rocketeers will try to launch an
unmanned replica of the Mercury Redstone, which first transported Alan Shepard
and Gus Grissom into space.

With space entrepreneurship on the rise, including plans by Robert Bigelow,
the owner of Budget Suites hotel chain, to invest $500 million in an
inflatable space hotel for tourists, even members of this proletariat rocket
nation are being tapped for real projects.

John Carmack, a member who is also the creator of the games Quake and Doom,
recruited fellow hobbyists to help design a lunar landing vehicle for a
competition sponsored by NASA and the X Prize Foundation.

b
Itbs more important to me to get people who are building, testing and
flying things than an aerospace graduate who has never screwed two bolts
together,b
 Mr. Carmack said.

David Reese, 19, a member of Tripoli since age 8, now works at the Rocket
Propulsion Laboratory at the University of Southern California, where he is
helping to develop a carbon fiber vehicle designed to go to the edge of space.
He ecstatically broke his own record at Black Rock, with a launching of 17,230
feet.

b
The Sony Playstation motto is, bLeave your world here and play in
ours,b b
 Mr. Reese said of a more ubiquitous teenage pastime. b
But why
leave this world when you can hang out with a bunch of nerds and play with
rockets in the middle of the desert?b


--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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