"Some of you have been tempted to make your own rocket propellants and rocket airframes. Those of you who have done so and who are still with us and who still have all your fingers, eyes, hair, and head are luckier than you are scientific. Just because you have played around with a chemistry set you got for Chrismas, don't think that you are familiar with the chemicals needed in rocket propellants," opens "The Model Rocketeer" article.

Orville H. Carlisle wrote these sentences in the opening paragraph of "The Do's And Don't's Of Model Rocketry," the opening article in "The Model Rocketeer, Volume 1, Issue 1," dated February of 1958.  The Model Rocketeer was the official journal of the Model Missile Association, and Carlisle, he was MMA #1.  The Model Missile Association would later became the National Association of Rocketry.

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10-10-2007 09:07 PM  #1
Bayourat Level 3   Joined: Aug 2006 Posts: 25	Beginings of the Saftey Code This looks like the infantcy of the Model Rocket Saftey Code. Whit R.

10-11-2007 02:38 PM  #2
denverdoc Rana sapiens   Joined: Aug 2007 Posts: 1732	And which predates the "taming" of APCP and sugar by decades, but still informs the powers that be at NAR. Tell me I didn't say that.

10-11-2007 02:51 PM  #3
ddmobley Administrator   Joined: Jul 2006 Posts: 2146	Quote: And which predates the "taming" of APCP and sugar by decades, but still informs the powers that be at NAR. Tell me I didn't say that. "Informs" or "Forms"?

10-11-2007 11:44 PM  #4
tedcochran55409 NAR Trustee   Joined: Aug 2006 Posts: 46	I suspect that if APCP had been readily available back then, model rocketry would have had a different history. But given that kids were sticking match heads and firecracker guts into CO2 cartridges, and making nitrogen triiodide from their chemistry sets, Carlisle's advice wasn't so bad for the time.

10-12-2007 12:07 AM  #5
denverdoc Rana sapiens   Joined: Aug 2007 Posts: 1732	Ted, Interesting thought about APCP. For the record, I have only the greatest admiration for G Harry, Carlisle, and Estes. They did the country a great service in directing the basement bombing into a safe domain, and for the accompanying crusade to get it accepted Everywhere, USA. Speaking of historical thought experiments, imagine that model rocketry has not been invented, now post 9/11, these guys come along today with this pitch to "arm" america's youth with safer alternatives...Good luck.