Hobbies: Birds in the Hand

A gusty wind snapped in at 20 knots across Ohio’s Clinton County Air Force Base, but all systems were Go. “T minus seven and counting,” boomed the range officer’s bullhorn. “. . . Five, four, three, two, one—ignition!” And with that, a 12-in. plastic, balsa and paper rocket zoomed aloft bearing a one-ounce payload of lead to the somewhat suborbital altitude of 800 ft. “Good shot,” cheered the range officer. “A good bird!”

And so it went all last week as 80 amateur rocketeers, aged nine to 67, fired off samples of their best hardware at the eighth national meet of the National Association of Rocketry. The 2,000-member organization was formed in the post-Sputnik days, had as its main aim the laying down of rules so that the hobby, which often proved fatal, would be safe as well as fun. Eight years ago, the N.A.R. estimates, homemade rockets were killing or maiming one out of every seven kids and laymen attempting to mix fuel and fire a backyard bird. Explosive mixtures of sulphur and zinc dust blinded and burned dozens of people; lead pipes packed with match heads blew up like shrapnel in the inventors’ faces.

Exploding Confetti. N.A.R. laid down a safety code calling for the use of preloaded, factory-made model rocket engines instead of home-mixed propellants, recovery parachutes in the birds, and 13 other pointers on the gingerly care of miniature Titans. Among the strictures in the pledge: “My model rockets will not contain explosive warheads.” Wood and paper are specified as the safest materials for construction. “This way,” explains N.A.R. Executive Director James Kukowski, “even if an engine does explode, you get nothing but confetti.”

The amateurs’ payloads are small and the rockets peewee size. But enthusiasm and, among the teenagers, an astonishing ratio of intelligence to years, fires them with an ample lift. Last week at the N.A.R. meet, experts from NASA, the Army and the Air Force were recruited to judge such sophisticated craft as a model Gemini-Titan constructed (in a total of 300 man-hours) on a 1-to-48 scale, complete with a two-man capsule. Sixteen-year-old Albert Kirchner of Bethpage, N.Y., woomphed off a three-stage Little Joe II-Apollo test vehicle that cost him 200 hours of labor. A few pioneers are even sending aloft mice and grasshoppers, which successfully parachute back to earth at the end of the ride.

1,500 Rockets. Fortunately for the amateurs, the hobby costs little more than their labor. Factory-built rocket kits sell from $1.25 to $15. One-shot solid propellant engines, the largest of which can sustain thrust for two seconds, are available for as little as 25¢. With prices like that and the pastime booming, amateur rocketry has become a small big business: Estes Industries of Penrose, Colo., the largest of five manufacturers in the field, alone grosses about $1,300,000 a year. The present N.A.R. meet will make none of them the poorer; by the time the week was over, some 1,500 more rocket engines had been blasted into smoke.