Rocketry Planet

On April 25, 2009, history will be made.  At Higgs Farm in Price, Maryland, Steve Eves will enter the history books as the person who flew the largest model rocket in history. The rocket will weigh over 1,600 pounds, it will stand over 36 feet tall and it will be powered by a massive array of nine motors: eight 13,000ns N-Class motors and a 77,000ns P-Class motor. The  estimated altitude of this single stage effort will be between 3,000 and 4,000 feet and the project will be recovered at apogee. In a special to Rocketry Planet, author Mark B. Canepa and ROCKETS Magazine wish to share Steve Eve's story with the readers here. 

On the evening of July 20, 1969, eleven-year-old Steve Eves and his father, Donald, stepped out of their home in northern Ohio to gaze into the night sky.  Above them, nearly a quarter of a million miles away, three American astronauts—one in a small space capsule circling the moon and two more on the lunar surface—had just achieved the greatest scientific accomplishment of modern times—maybe of all times—by safely reaching, landing, and now walking on the surface of the moon. A few hours earlier, on a small television screen in their house, Eves and his father had witnessed the seemingly impossible—men walking on another world—and they now looked toward the stars with a new sense of wonder, and pride. 

America's accomplishment left its mark on the young Steve Eves, and taught him that when you set your mind to something, almost anything can be done.

Now fifty, the soft-spoken Eves is poised to pay homage to that night—and to the untold thousands of Americans who made the race to the Moon possible—with the upcoming launch of the largest amateur rocket ever built: a one-tenth-scale Saturn V that is, in almost every outward respect, a perfect replica of the mighty vehicle that took mankind to the moon forty years ago. The rocket, standing more than three stories tall and weighing almost a ton, will be launched in 2009 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of NASA's historic moon landing in 1969.  To be powered by nine motors generating more than 8,000 pounds of thrust, this high-power rocket is likely to bring a huge national spotlight—however briefly—to a hobby that is still relatively unfamiliar to the general public.

In high-power rocketry, this project will certainly make history.  But it almost didn't happen.

A Little Boy and the Space Program

Steve Eves discovered rocketry in elementary school in Springfield, Ohio.  "I was in the fourth grade and one of the kids in class had an older brother who was into model rockets," he said. "One day he put on a demonstration behind the school and launched some rockets on black powder A and B motors—that experience "tripped a trigger" in me," said Eves, the middle of the three sons born to Donald and Mary Louise Eves of Hartville. 

Soon, Eves was building his own model rockets, including his first Saturn V—an early Estes kit. "One of my cousins became involved in the hobby, too, and he built a Saturn IB and we launched both rockets out in the yard, surrounded by trees, telephone poles and high power electrical lines," he said.  "I think my Saturn V ended up crashing."

Eves remembers clearly when NASA's Saturn V propelled Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong to mankind's first landing on the moon in July, 1969.  "We only had one television at the time—a thirteen-inch-black-and-white set—and it was always kept in the basement," he recalled. For the historic moon landing, however, an exception was made. The tiny television was carried up into the living room, where the entire family gathered around to see Neil Armstrong step off the Lunar Lander, and to hear him utter the famous words—"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

"Sitting on the living room floor watching this historic event live—with the words on the bottom of the screen that said "LIVE FROM THE MOON" was an incredible experience," said Eves. "We had all followed the space program and it was a mad dash to beat the Russians to the moon—just another part of the Cold War that we had grown up with—and now we had won the race."

That night—like millions of people all over the world—Eves and his father looked up at Earth's solitary satellite with a new sense of the future. "I think I was hoping to see something," said Eves, as the two of them peered into the dark sky, like ancient seafarers looking for a glimpse of land. "Of course, we could not see anything—even later with our telescope—but we knew that they were up there."

The Apollo program continued beyond that historic landing in 1969 for another four years—at an incredible pace, really—through five more lunar landings, the near-disaster of Apollo 13, and the last flight of the Saturn V to propel Skylab into space in 1973.   Eves continued to follow each mission closely and, in a small way, his own family became involved with part of the program.

Donald Eves, an engineer who worked for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company for more than thirty years, was involved in the development of the tires that were ultimately used on the moon buggy used by the astronauts in the later Apollo flights. "I think at the time it was all top secret," remembers Eves, but it is part of a deeper connection to the entire space program that sticks with Eves to this day. "The tires used on the moon buggy were actually not rubber at all," he said. "They were made of flexible steel—steel bands all riveted together—that allowed the buggy to safely get around obstacles and rocks on the moon's surface." 

Eves said that his father—who passed away from Parkinson's Disease in late 2008—went on to work as one of Goodyear's representatives on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, helping to develop vehicle tires that would minimize the environmental impact of the project on the Alaskan tundra.

What did his father think of Eve's massive tribute to the Apollo program?

"He always took an interest in my rocketry hobby and he was very happy with this project," said Eves. "He was thrilled to see his picture in ROCKETS Magazine after the Saturn V was stood up for the first time in a shopping center near Akron [in July 2008]." Eve's one-tenth-scale rocket was lifted into vertical position by a crane, and when it was set in place it stood more than thirty-six feet tall. Onlookers at the shopping center were dumbfounded at the sight of the huge rocket—even more so when they learned that the gigantic Saturn V "model" was actually going to fly. 

The End of the Space Race

Steve Eves discusses the construction of the largest hobby rocket in history, his 1:10 scale Saturn V.

The Apollo program ended abruptly in the mid-1970s.  The final three missions—all to be powered by the Saturn V—were scrapped for financial reasons. "I was a teenager and did not fully understand the money aspect of the program, said Eves. "But with the accomplishment of several successful moon landings behind us, I think people's attention just dropped off."

By the time the first Space Shuttle—Columbia—took off several years later, Eves own attention to the space program had moved on, too. "There were cars and girls now, and my interests were just not the same," he said.  "I followed the shuttle program generally, but it was not the center of my universe, like the Apollo program and the moon landings once were."

Eves' older brother, Terry, went on to college after high school and is now a professor of Hebrew language at a private college in South Carolina.  However, college was not the path for Steve.  He always liked working with his hands and he started doing auto body work in a neighbor's garage when he was just fourteen.  Building on his talents and abilities working on cars, he travelled to the small town of Grand Island, Nebraska, in 1978 to attend a technical course on auto-body framing.  Eves expected that the trip would last a couple of weeks, and that he would return home with a nice certificate attesting to his new experience.

"As soon as I arrived in Grand Island the town was hit by this huge hailstorm—baseball size and larger hail—that damaged all of the cars in the area," said Eves, who quickly realized that opportunity was knocking on his door.  "The body shops there were now booming, and I was just twenty years old and looking for some adventure, so I took a job at a local shop and went right to work. It took two years for the hail damage work to finally slacken off."

But the hook was in, and Eves made a life in Nebraska—getting married and having three children along the way.  That marriage ended, however, and in 1988 Eves—now the custodial parent of his three children—decided to return home to Ohio near Akron. He bought a home in Lake Township—just off of Interstate 77—where he has remained for the past 20 years.  Eves continued to work in the auto body business, always increasing his skills and becoming more specialized along the way.