Rocketry Planet

Everything starts somewhere, even if determining exactly where is difficult to pin down. But when you are dealing with three times the fun, sometimes it gets down right difficult. Three times anything can be a lot, yet other times, it can be just right. When it comes to Rocket Team Vatsaas and the three brothers involved, you'll have to be the judge.

The three brothers, Brad, Rick and Mark Vatsaas, have put together a website that is unlike most others. Their exploits, wonderfully chronicled on their website and bundled together with generous doses of humor, make it difficult to determine whether they're real or if your watching the Keystone Cops. But it makes for such an enjoyable experience, I just had to share their story with you.

Brothers Brad, Rick & Mark Vatsaas with their father, Christian.

Brad Vatsaas is 47 years old and works for Honeywell's Defense and Space business. He currently works in technical sales, pursuing new business opportunities in the areas of advanced technology and space exploration. Brother Rick Vatsaas, 44 years old, is employed by Lockheed Martin as a mechanical engineer and works on various aerospace and military projects. The other brother, Mark Vatsaas, is 37 years old and is the Director of Information Technology at vrbo.com, the world's largest Internet rental listing service for privately owned vacation properties. They also have a sister, but her interest in rocketry is non-existent.

The common denominator of the Vatsaas brothers appears to be linked to the family's patriarchal role mode, their father, Christian Vatsaas. His unique brand of humor appears to have been particularly contagious, as humor is a core parser on their website. A Norwegian immigrant, he came to America in 1947 at the young age of 19 only to find himself halfway around the world just a few years later defending the United States during the Korean Conflict. After returning from Korea, he met his wife and began a career as a middle school teacher.

Cousin John (front) and Rick model the daring fashions of 1981: hot pants and tube socks.

The brothers attribute their father for their early appreciation of rocketry, with dad bringing home an Estes Astron Scout in the late 60's and after helping his boys assemble it, hauling them down to the local ball field to launch the creation. Now before you do the math, chances are you have determined that Brad was the only one who was fully impacted by this event, given than Rick was only 5 and Mark still a few years out, but you have to understand that rocketry must have come genetically wired for these brothers.

Now that the brothers have found themselves at geographically diverse places within the continental United States, their website has enabled them to still enjoy the hobby as well as establish some of the finer points of their family tree, making the site an interesting read — you just have to see it for yourself. The website also serves as the central repository of the brother's rocketry projects, and every October, they get together to fly as a team. The results naturally find their way onto the website.

Today, Brad lives in Arizona, while Rick lives in Minnesota and Mark lives somewhere in Cyberspace. Ok, he really lives in Colorado.  Brad is a member of Superstition Spacemodeling Society (SSS) in Phoenix, AZ and is a member of NAR while Rick is an active member of the Minnesota Amateur Spacemodeler Association (MASA) and is a member of NAR. Rick is Level 2 certified, and Brad is Level 3 certified.

Team Varsaas' Standard Arm in 2004.

After chuckling my way through much of their website, I knew I had to do a website review of what I had just spent so much time enjoying. And, because these playful individuals made the process of interviewing them so enjoyable, I decided present their responses in the pure humor they gave them, which I give straight to you for your enjoyment. Where questions were answered directly by an individual, I'll denote them with their names, otherwise you'll see their collective answers delineated by "RTV."

RP: Do you consider yourself a BAR?  If so, what caused you to leave the hobby originally?

RTV: All three brothers were active rocketeers when we were boys, introduced to the hobby by our dad. We quit flying rockets in our teens in the hopeless attempt to attract girlfriends. And we all coincidentally re-entered rocketry after separate viewings of the movie 'October Sky', under the feeble excuse that it was "for the children."

RP: Do you fly model, mid-power, high-power or a combination of those? 

RTV: Even though Brad and Rick are certified to fly large rockets, all of us enjoy building and flying rockets of all sizes. And Mark, who has had the uncommon good sense to protect his home budget from the seductive allure of high power, has participated in all the large-scale group projects we've built — so he is as experienced as anyone in creating impact craters of astonishing size.

As a team, we stick to really big projects. Individually, the complexity of a project is usually defined by factors other than size. Very often the design is so out-of-the-box that it isn't practical to make it really large.

Brad participated on the ART Saturn V.

RP: What is your favorite real rocket?

Mark: Although it never made it into production, I am awed by Lockheed Martin's MGM-166 LOSAT kinetic energy missile. Accelerating to Mach 4.5 and reaching is maximum range in just 5 seconds, it is basically a large, rocket powered, bullet.

Brad: The Saturn 1b is the prettiest, but the Saturn V is the most impressive. I used to have a guy working for me who participated on the Apollo program, and he gave me a unique insight into the minds that made it happen. The journey to the moon was the most altruistic adventure in the history of mankind.

The Standard Missile is an amazing piece of technology. Just when it seems to be destined for obsolescence it is assigned a new important mission, the latest being a critical role in the missile defense network. And it is dead sexy.

Rick: No Question; Rocket Ship Galileo... What?  What do you mean it's not real?

RP: What is your favorite kit?

Brad: I had the opportunity to build a Talon kit from Giant Leap Rocketry, and it was a sheer pleasure. Not only is it a beautiful rocket, but the attention to detail in the components and instructions were top-shelf. I recommend it to everyone who asks, and it comes in sizes suitable for flyers at all levels of rocketry.

Rick: The Big Bertha will always be my favorite. It's so iconic. Whenever I look at one I see a faded black and white picture of some kid in a striped t-shirt, holding the model up to the camera while his crew-cut dad proudly looks down at him.

Mark: The Launch Pad had some really great military mid-power kits. Some were scale models and some were unique to that vendor. I really liked the Perseus, for example.

A toy bank on eBay inspired this creation.

RP: Do you prefer to build kits or scratch-build?

RTV: Hands down, scratch built kits. The creation of a unique flying design is where you really learn to stretch yourself.

RP: If you had to pass along one valuable tip to today's hobbyist, what would that be?

RTV: If a falling rocket is headed straight towards you, don't run away. That way, when it hits you, you don't look quite so stupid.

RP: What project of yours is most memorable, and why?

Brad: My sister saved a napkin from her son's rocket-themed birthday party and gave it to me because she knew I would appreciate it. She never dreamed that I would build it, and it became the 'Happy Birthday Party Napkin Rocket of the Apocalypse'. It was that design that got me started in bulbous airframes, fiberglass molding, and a lot of other techniques that really made the hobby pop for me.

Rick: 'The Flying Hinderocket'. I sliced my thumb tendon in a home improvement accident, weeks before GHS 2004.  I needed something I could build while my arm was in a cast.  The whole reason for its relative size was to accommodate my temporary lack of dexterity.

Mark: Our first team project was a 2/5th scale Standard Missile. It stands out to me simply for the sheer fun we had in planning, building the components, and assembling the final result. We worked our tails off only to watch it crash on its maiden flight, but the disappointment was short-lived compared to the great memories.

RP: Do you use any unique construction techniques that you are particularly endeared to?

Brad: I probably do more with molded fiberglass airframes than most blokes do. I like to create the cigar-shaped sci-fi designs like you see in the black-and-white science fiction films I remember from my youth. They were terrible cinema, but great looking spacecraft.

Rick: I think the 'goblet rocket' design Brad invented is pretty neat (the airframes and nose cones are made out of polypropylene drinkware from Wal-Mart). You can have a truly unique, sci-fi rocket for not much effort or expense. And they look really cool on your desk.  I have a whole china cabinet's worth of potential airframes waiting to be built.

Mark: If 'persnickety' is a technique, then that's the one I'm endeared to. I like the finished product to look as good as possible, and with tenacity and determination, I can turn even my table saw into a precision tool with tolerances of 1/64th of an inch. Mostly, however, I use sandpaper and a lot of patience. This is probably why I haven't produced many rockets.

From a kid's party napkin comes...

RP: What was your most memorable flight, and why?

Brad: The first time I launched one of my large bulbous airframes was indescribable. Many predicted a disaster, but I did everything right in the design and it flew great. That was fortunate, because some of my later projects flew like a drunk in a bumper car. I might never have tried again if my first flight was a failure.

Rick: I still remember an Estes Astron Space Plane I built when I was a kid. The kit was already at least ten years old when I had built it. On its second launch the wings shredded into splinters. I can still see the pieces fluttering down.

Mark: The first time we held the Bert drag race was completely surreal. At one point we were surrounded by a crowd of people three deep, and all snapping pictures like crazed paparazzi. Our large and complex projects never garnered a tenth of the attention of those ridiculous Muppet rockets, eliminating any temptation to take ourselves too seriously.

Years before that, our cousin John launched his first mid-power motor in a rocket that was built with an unreinforced motor retainer. I was about eight or nine, and I remember diving for cover as John's core-burning black powder E motor, suddenly unencumbered by such bothersome components as fuselage and fin, careened about our heads before sailing off over the lake in a graceful arc of fire.

Muppets with fins, Evil Berts all...

RP: What flight would you most like to forget?

Brad: We once launched a large two-stage M project where the upper stage motor didn't ignite and the parachutes failed to deploy. We came within a few feet of installing a new skylight in an RV parked behind the flight line. That was really scary, and we were extremely thankful that no one was hurt.

Rick: Ditto

Mark: Probably the night I was abducted by aliens and whisked off to the far side of Uranus while being probed and poked with vibrating implements shaped like elongated Pez dispensers. The worst part was having to share a bunk with Dennis Kucinich.

RP: Why did you choose to establish a hobby rocketry website?

RTV: We brothers live in different parts of the country, and we get together every October to fly as a rocket team. After our first annual gathering, Mark (the IT guy) recommended we create the site to document our cooperative efforts. We put that first site together, took a step back, and realized how indistinguishable it was from every other personal website. So Mark really stepped up the web design and Rick and Brad have been responsible for creating and posting content. Since then we've tried to find ways to make our commentary and subjects stand at right angles to other rocket sites - there is rocketry, but there is also humor and human-interest stuff that non-rocketeers seem to enjoy. Consider us the Erma Bombeck of rocketry.

RP: What message are you trying to convey with your website?

Wanna make nose cones? Check out their website's thorough construction section.

RTV: We hope that people find our site useful, but mostly we want to make rocketry fun. If your hobby isn't fun, then what's the point?

The most feedback we get from people is from those who appreciate our collective sense of humor and the fact that we don't take ourselves too seriously. That's the message that gets out anyway. Our real agenda is to inform the world that Elvis is alive and sending you coded messages via 'The Family Circus®'.

RP: Is there a particular part of your website that you think people should look at?

RTV: There is a lot of content on our site that is common to other rocketry-related sites, like construction methods, videos, calculation tools, or project descriptions - but permeated throughout the site is the same irreverent tongue-in-cheek snarkiness that would make our mother hit us with a spoon when we were younger. She still does.

'Missile-aneous', the entire east-wing of our web site, is devoted to humorous subjects that are related to rocketry by only the most tenuous connection. We have files on Odd-Rocs, Not-Rocs, threatening letters from lawyers (and our pithy responses) and perhaps the most peculiar collection of its kind, 'Rockets on Cakes' — because the world is simply ill-informed about aerodynamic pastries. We have a spoof page documenting our fictional entry into the X-Prize competition to put a civilian team into space. We were actually contacted by the X-Prize committee after they stumbled across our web site, which was quite a thrill. Of course, the contact was accompanied by a restraining order, so that took some of the luster off the experience.

RP: What future plans do you have for your website?

RTV: We have been trying to agree on a new URL that is a bit more memorable and descriptive than vatsaas.org/rtv. Unfortunately many of the good URL's are taken, and nearly all of our favorite monikers also have a double meaning that could get us mistaken for a p0rn site. The search engines get that messed up enough as it is.

RP: What would you like to see available to rocketry enthusiasts via the web?

RTV: Bill Gates sends us a free reload whenever we forward a chain letter email.

So there you have it, a wonderful journey into the minds of three real hobby rocketeers. If only we could get a free reload for spam!

Website: http://www.vatsaas.org/rtv/

Reader comments:

#1

I love their website!! Glad you did a review on it. By coincidence, I was showing it to my youngest son (17 yr old) last night and heard him chuckling while reading the descriptions of some of their flights and the names of their rockets.

rocketguy101 on 04-22-2007 09:19 PM

#2

I love their website too! There is a wealth of information on there about construction techniques like mold making, fiberglassing, hot wiring, nose cones, etc. but the real treat is the hilarity of it all! It is a must see!

crontab on 04-22-2007 09:52 PM

#3

As a completely independent observer with no connection to the Vatsaas family whatsoever, I have to agree that these witty and intelligent brothers do for Rocketry what the Veg-o-Matic does for salad! (Oh, and my many lady friends tell me that Brad Vatsaas is one irresistable rocket hottie!)

Vradley Batsaas on 04-23-2007 01:01 AM

#4

Quote:

I have to agree that these witty and intelligent brothers do for Rocketry what the Veg-o-Matic does for salad! (Oh, and my many lady friends tell me that Brad Vatsaas is one irresistable rocket hottie!)

This is shaping up very well! We might be witnessing a sneak preview of next season's Desperate Housewives!

ddmobley on 04-23-2007 01:58 PM

#5

I often find myself directed to Team Vatsaas website during "Google" searches, and mostly find the pertinent information.


MW

herefishy on 04-23-2007 10:30 PM

#6

They have found a rather amazing angle on the hobby. When I need a little inspiration, I like to head that way and check out the projects. While I WON'T attest to Brad's hotness, I will say he's brilliantly crafty.

Did you have too much fun in college or what? Does you rocket room have a black light?

Fini on 04-24-2007 07:36 PM

#7

Thank you for the terrific article, Darryl. It was a pleasure collaborating with you. I apologize for the flippant answers you received from my brothers. They’re maladjusted miscreants, both of them.
Cheers, and best of luck to Rocketry Planet!

bvatsaas on 04-26-2007 05:10 PM

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