ARGONIA, Kansas USA — About the time most people are clocking in at work or finishing up the newspaper at home this morning, Bruce Lee will help escort a rocket he built to a specially made launch pad.

He'll be among the last of at least 300 adults since Thursday who have made the trek from as far away as Australia to this patch of Kansas about 30 miles south of Wichita.

They came to take part in a shoot of "Large and Dangerous Rocket Ships," otherwise known as the annual Tripoli International High-Power Rocket Launch, the largest and most prestigious annual event of its kind.

And Lee has brought the main event.

At the pad, the 47-year-old Omaha, Neb., resident and 10 technicians will prepare to launch the rocket, which, though scaled down to one-third the size, is an exact reproduction of the Mercury Redstone that launched Alan B. Shepard Jr. into space in 1961. And as he prepares, Lee will pause to marvel at what he has made.

His rocket stands 30 feet high. If everything goes as planned, the engine — with its fuel supply equal to about 75,000 bottle rockets — will ignite properly. Then the exhaust cloud will first spill across the Kansas prairie, then follow the rocket about a mile or so skyward.

Lee says he will marvel again as it tumbles toward Earth and parachutes — on cue — explode from within and gently land the craft.

But perhaps what he doesn't marvel at is exactly what is most puzzling to outsiders: This is a hobby, a lark, what he does to relax.

As they said repeatedly over the loudspeakers this weekend: "Welcome to the world of high power."

It's a world where grown men and women spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours fine-tuning big toys. A world where five days standing outside in hot pasture land was eagerly anticipated. A world where limitations are set only by imaginations, and everyone seems to have the imagination of a kid.

"Someday soon, probably this year, one of us is going to send a rocket into outer space," Lee says, speaking about rockets made of paperboard but powered by some of the same stuff that propels the space shuttle. "I mean, we count outer space as 50 miles up, and we're getting pretty close to figuring out how to get there. Imagine, being the first nongovernmental body to leave the atmosphere."

Makes sense. This is a hobby with its roots in the space race of the late 1950s and '60s, when the orbit of the Soviet Sputnik satellite scared the dickens out of Americans. Recently, that time was captured in the movie "October Sky," about four West Virginia boys who took to making rockets. One of those boys, Quentin Wilson, was in Argonia this weekend. It's the first such shoot he has attended.

"For years and years, I didn't have any playmates, so I didn't shoot rockets. It's no fun by yourself, but this is great," he said.

In the beginning, this was a hobby for children. They made little rockets, usually about a foot tall or so, then sneaked out to a vacant lot and sent them a couple hundred feet into the air with little engines they lighted by match.

And kids did shoot off rockets like those in Argonia this weekend. But those involved in the hobby note that much has changed.

During the past decade, more adults have gotten involved. Consequently, backyard liftoffs weren't always enough. Little rockets weren't always enough.

Instead:

• Dozens of official launch pads were set up for the event.
• Launch officials from a central post controlled the remote electronic ignition of all rockets, meaning rockets were "lit" from at least a dozen yards and up to a quarter mile away, and only when the launch official determined spectators and rocket owners were in safe positions.
• Announcers counted down each launch over a loudspeaker system: "On launch pad 53, ten, nine, eight...." Then they described each flight, "She's straight," "We've got chute deployment."
• Rocketeers spoke in their own jargon: Strippers were rockets whose speed sheared off their parachutes; streamers fell with parachutes accidentally twisted into a single string; lawn darts are those from which the chutes had failed to pop out.
• Rocket launchers were registered from most states and from four countries, event officials said. This in a farming community of 550 people.
• Emergency crews waited nearby, and official safety officers added to the notion that Large and Dangerous Rocket Ships were just what they sound like.

And they were.

Ray Bryant came from New York state to launch a rocket he'd spent more than $1,000 and one year building. Upon ignition, the engine malfunctioned. Flames shooting out the back sent the rocket spiraling just high enough to twist the body when it crashed back to Earth, where it caused a short-lived prairie fire.

"It's a monumental disappointment, but it happens," he said stoically, loading the wreckage into a van and preparing to go home.

Time and time again, probably more than 1,000 times in all, usually men but sometimes women would load rockets up to 20 feet high onto launch rods or pads. After each ignition, hundreds of spectators craned their necks to watch them race away and then float back to Earth.

As one man noted, shading his eyes from the sun as he watched a rocket fall: "Only hobby on Earth where you sunburn the palms of your hands."

The hobby distinguishes itself from most others. Just ask 46-year-old Steve Swagerty of Overland Park about who takes note of his hobby.

For starters, there were the people at the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He needs two separate licenses from that agency to store and use the materials needed to send his rockets screaming into the sky.

Then there are the folks at the Federal Communications Commission. Without their permission, he wouldn't be allowed to open up the signal that connects him to his toy rocket ship while it's in flight.

Of course, the Federal Aviation Administration had to approve all launch times. For this meet, the FAA approved a 25,000-foot ceiling, though individuals could apply for more space. That's needed because nobody wants to see these models hit or scare passing airplanes.

And, quite frankly, the regulatory list is just getting started. At various times, the Secret Service, FBI and CIA have all paid attention.

So why do it?

To Swagerty, it's obvious. Most days, he's a teacher in the Shawnee Mission School District, a man who describes a full 51 weeks a year of his life as "very normal, very predictable." But that 52nd week is given to flying rockets.

"I swear, every time one of my rockets lifts off, I'm 12 years old again," he said. "It's pure magic."

As part of a Kansas City-based group of five that calls itself the Rocket-Heads, Swagerty spent two years building his rocket. It's 15 feet tall and contains three computers, a video camera, a transmitter, a battery pack, an altitude counter and two parachutes.

"What I love is the process," he said. "You visualize what it is you want to do, then get your hands dirty in each stage of actually doing it, and then it flies, and you can see the results."

Rocket partner James Murphy of Kansas City said there were many challenges in that process.

"We've had to learn or improve in areas from computers to aeronautics to pyrotechnics to cameras," he said. "We've had to design our own rockets, then figure out what materials to make them from. There's always something new to figure out."

The fins on their rocket, for example, are made from blue-foam insulation, then painted with a fiberglass coating. Before they could cut the foam to their own specifications, they had to make a special tool. The cutting alone took a month.

Of course, even these challenges are not always enough.

"One of our original group has decided to make a submarine," Murphy said. "An actual sub that he plans to go underwater in. I say no thanks. But I guess that's what it's all about."

Copyright © 1999 The Kansas City Star