Rocketry Planet

It appears to me that the defendant did nothing more than cite their ability to make rules.

Also, in the last link they cite bombing incidents and recoveries. I am unclear as to if the recoveries are part of the incidents or not and if APCP constituted the less than on half of one percent of the devices or if it was rocket motors in general.

I think I fried my brain trying to understand these documents, but one thing has become clear to me. The BATFE is not doing it's job. It is regulating areas that are not what I consider a serious issue and not taking care of those that are. Much like gun regulation, they are eliminating citizens lawfully using a given product so that the only people who then use the product are criminals. This does not eliminate crimes.

So in 218 or 219 cases cited by the BATFE (the document conflicts with itself on this), I have a question. Over what time period did these occur? What did these people use as a source for these materials? What quantities were used in these items? How does the 62.5g limit currently being defended by the government apply to these cases?

These matters go to the heart of the plaintiff's use of the phrase arbitrary and capricious. Why was the limit set at 62.5g when I can purchase at one time 50 pounds of black powder, which is extremely energetic as shown by BATFE's own testing, and legally store it in my house without any special precautions? I mean the pipe bomb argument cited by the defendant doesn't hold water with me here.

I think they just don't like the idea of anybody obtaining an FAA waiver due to altitude and size of rocket, not because said rocket is explosive, without them getting involved, so they labeled APCP as explosive due to it's being used in hobby rocketry for high powered rockets rather than black powder being used in such because BP is commonly used in low powered rockets only.

They want to regulate the hobby, plain and simple, and will do whatever they have to in order to position themselves as the agency to do so. That's how I see it.

Go get them NAR and TRA. I'm behind you 100%.

I believe that the bomb data is intended to mislead.

First is that this is an arson and explosives database. Which of these incidents were explosives? Since the explosive properties or lack thereof of APCP are at issue here that is important. It is possible that they exclude arson but since the details of how the search was performed are not given it is impossible to tell for sure. I refuse to take the ATF's word for it.

Then there is the obfuscation of the search terms. "rocket motor" and "rocket engine" will most likely turn up incidents using Estes BP motors rather than APCP. Then of course "ammonium perchlorate" is not APCP although you are supposed to make that connection.

Seeing discrepancies in ATF documents is nothing new. Apparently they can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

But of the 218 incidents reported, let me break down what the ATF doesn't want you to know:

• 37 incidents of people removing black powder from model rocket engines for the construction of a destructive device.
  
• 173 incidents of people using Estes igniters to detonate a destructive device.
  
• only 8 incidents of people making destructive devices with ammonium perchlorate, in all these years. Yeah, you really need to get right on regulating that, ATF.

Keep in mind, there is ZERO indication as to the source of the ammonium perchlorate. There is no indication that the ammonium perchlorate is APCP, or that it came from rocket motors, let alone HOBBY rocket motors. Nor is there any indications that ALL of the devices were detonated — I suspect they were not all detonated, but instead some were devices confiscated.

The totals given were the totals from all related incidents on record. How this is relevant to the appeals court's remand to establish a deflagration burn rate is beyond me. More smoke and mirrors by ATF to try and bully the court into deferring to the agency's expertise.

Perhaps the real title of this article should be:

"ATF's Shatzer files affidavit in U.S. District Court confirming himself an idiot"

So assuming that there were 8 APCP related incidents, and assuming that 44,629 is the total number of incidents (this math gives the BATFE the edge in what I'm about to do), then APCP made up (rounded up) 0.02% of all of these devices.

By comparison, Estes motors made up 0.08% (rounded down) of these devices.

Even if I am willing to say that all of these were explosive devices, which I most assuradly am not, I can't think of a remark with enough sarcasm in it to describe exactly how much these numbers don't affect me or the general public.

"Among 4,335 explosive devices reported to the FBI in 1997, black or smokeless powder was used in 44% (1,919) of improvised explosive devices"
http://findarticles.com/p/...200507/ai_n14823129/pg_2

Well gee whiz.

No no no! There were 8 ammonium perchlorate related incidents, NOT 8 APCP incidents. We have no way of knowing if these 8 involved APCP at all. I am a betting man, and I am willing to bet that a search on "AMMONIUM PERCHLORATE COMPOSITE PROPELLANT" or "APCP" produced ZERO results for them.

I agree with that but for the sake of making the best case for the BATFE I made some assumptions and found their stance to be a joke on the face of it. Your tax dollars at work. It's enough to make ya cry, ain't it?

It's pretty clear from Shatzer has no background whatsoever in the areas of rocket motors or propellants. His affadavit is quite embarrassing for someone in such a position of authority. He's trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and it doesn't matter how hard he pushes, it doesn't fit.

Something started bothering me about this. Did they establish a deflagration burn rate in the filing of the monster data they sent in or did they claim to have established it in their motion for summary judgment?

I looked up deflagrate in the dictionary, having given up trying to understand the word by context. Strangely enough it's an intransitive verb meaning to burn with great heat and give off sparks (not go boom for BATFE employees) and should not be confused with detonate, also an intransitive verb, which means to explode with sudden violence ("Jamie wants big boom." for the afore mentioned employees and MythBuster fanatics). Safety fuse, which is what the BATFE uses as a baseline, doesn't deflagrate. It's designed not to according to their own documentation, as it does not emit sparks. Might as well compare it to bond paper. Oh wait, they did. Didn't bond paper, at the upper end, have a faster burn rate than the lower end of APCP?

Deflagration has absolutely nothing to do with it's ability to burn in a vacuum. I've had matches not only ignite but deflagrate due to a chemical pocket or some such other thing. Sparklers that I can buy at any convenience store here in the great mistake, er, state of Iowa around July 4 deflagrate. Rub flint and steel and you get deflagration, although the heat is minuscule. A burning log in your fireplace has the capability of deflagration; just move the logs with a poker and you get sparks and lots of heat. Heck, those candles that you blow out only to have them reignite themselves work using deflagration.

Maybe comparing APCP's burn rate to that of a candle can now be explained, or am I giving the BATFE too much credit?

I'll assume the later and look at my tax dollars hard at work paying people with no grasp of the English language make rules on something they do not understand and show me time and time again that they do not want to understand it but instead want to regulate it for the publics own good. Put another way, words have meanings and you had better understand them if you are going to use them correctly, especially in legal documents on public record and in scientific discussion of anything.

What this comes down to, as near as I can figure, is at what rate does the item under question, in this case APCP, burn and emit sparks. The compound without any additives does not according to my understanding of it - although I could be mistaken. I see nowhere in their brief where they have established that it sparks when not under pressure nor that it emits sparks at all when burned without additives under any sort of pressure at all.

How is it I understand this with a whole semester of community college studying art of all things understand this but the organization who, I'm absolutely convinced at this point in the debate, file a whole bunch of paperwork that makes themselves look like idiots?

I'll go back to the gunpowder issue. If I can purchase 50 pounds of BP without an LEUP and store it in my house without any safety precautions and it's used in 44% of IED's (arson devices omitted) in the year 1997, while ammonium perchlorate (not necessarily APCP) is used in under 0.02% of what might be an arson device or an IED from an indeterminate time period, why is the limit being set at 62.5g? Wouldn't 625 pounds at least make more sense?

Not that I think they should get involved in public consumption of APCP in any way, shape, or form. I'm opposed to almost anything the BATFE does on general principle. I might agree with them 1 out of 100 times and this topic is not one of them.

The monstrosity of paperwork "establishing the deflagration rate" of APCP is in my opinion a scatological guide designed to overwhelm the court with so much cross indexed, footnoted, cataloged, technical, and ultimately useless information as to render the poor judge who has to sit and read the document while remaining awake completely unable to make an informed decision. Honestly, how can you make sense of something that takes 1,200+ pages to explain if the item in question sparks or not while burning? I mean for the love of Pete it's a yes or no question that requires at most 3 pages and a video tape. "Here's it burn rate, temperature, the conditions under which the tests were performed, and how much it sparks (if it creates sparks at all)." Motors that CATO during a bench test have nothing to do with this, nor does the way in which they are burned no matter who is doing the testing.

I do, however, give the BATFE credit for having possibly cured literate persons who are currently suffering insomnia.

I had to get this off me chest as for some odd reason it's been keeping me awake and at 6:00 AM I am more than ready to catch some shut-eye.

If there is some other definition of deflagrate out there that might change how this legal material should be viewed please let me know because it makes absolutely no sense to me why the BATFE has the ability to even attempt to explain regulating APCP using their current arguments.

I also give the NAR/TRA lawyers permission to use this rant in it's entirety if they chose to if it helps us, the plaintiffs, in any manner.

Thanks for giving me a place to vent DD. I feel a bit better now.

It is in response to item 24 in the NAR/TRAs list of facts where we claim "No person has ever been fatally injured as a result of use of APCP in hobby rockets."