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Rocket Hobbyists Get Blown Away by Regulations
dogfart writes "Amateur rocket hobbyists are bearing the brunt of Federal anti-terror efforts. Cumbersome regulations (which include extensive background checks) are pushing many to abandon the hobby. Even clubs associated with colleges (such as Kettering) have ended up folding under the pressure. Quoting the article: '"If we're in an environment where the government says you've got to get fingerprinted and background checked, and spend three to four months to do it, (adults are) not going to participate in my hobby," said Mark Bundick, president of the National Association of Rocketry. "We need more kids. It helps them learn technology. It's the technological base here in the country that we need to protect, and this hobby is a good introduction for kids that are interested in technology. If I lose those adults, then I will not be able to train those kids."'" We wrote about these regulations before, and followed it up with a Slashback.
The only way we are going to change things is to VOTE and get those ass-heads out of office!
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Yeah, when have you ever heard of an amateur rocket being used for terrorism?
Maybe we should outlaw fertilizer and diesel fuel, since they have actually been used for terrorist acts.
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Believe it or not, I've seen people do precisely that all the time. People have to really hunt to find launch sites around here (San Diego), and it's gotten worse since the fires (which is completely understandable). So every once in a while, you see somebody shoot a rocket up and then leave. They don't even collect the things
What I've always done is launch my rockets out in the desert (BLM property, which is state-owned and open to everyone for anything). I have a handy dry-lake launch site where there isn't anything flammable, or any people either for that matter.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
The chances of an unguided, sub-sonic rocket taking out an airplane is very small
While I can agree that some regulation of large quantities of solid propellant is a prudent thing, the thresholds in the current regs are too extreme, I think. Also, the $25 fee for a limited use permit is an unnecessary and excessive tax for an activity that has miminal impact on public assets.
From the linked article:
What you model terrorists don't seem to understand is that it doesn't matter that model rockets can't be used as weapons of terror.
What's important isn't controlling model rockets, per se; what's important is getting the American public used to a never-ending "war against terror", keeping them keyed-up, ever fearful and ever compliant.
What's important is getting the public resigned to always asking permission from the government, always being afraid that they're at risk of arrest, even for hobbies the government knows full well pose no realistic risk of harm.
And ultimately, what's important is making the people of this nation realize who is boss -- the government and its bureaucrats and its corporate owners --, and who is the servant -- the common taxpayer.
Once you realize that your hobbies "need" to be regulated to "fight terror", you'll docilely let the FBI knock on your door on behalf of the RIAA's searches, and you'll agree to submit your open source code to government inspection to make sure it doesn't "INDUCE" violation of copyright.
Once the formerly free American sheeple resign themselves to arbitrary governmental intrusions into their lives in order to further some ill-defined and ever elusive "war against terror", they'll stop squawking about
Or as our beloved Reichsminister Ashcroft explained, to the Senate Judiciary Committee, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
You, I, and the rocketry guy quoted might believe this, but protecting the technological base in this country is not a priority for the American powers-that-be.
More important is keeping labor cheap and the country tied down under a web of Homeland Security minutiae, which will keep the populace cowed and their own grip on power secure.
By contrast the Indian government, which actually seems to have their own national interest in mind, will be happy to run the miniscule "security" risk and let Indian kids play with model rockets-- the better technologically educated they are, the more advanced the tech jobs they can attract from willing American corporations.
You can glean a government's whole philosophy from little issues like this.
next thing you know, they'll be trying to nickle and dime away our right to bear arms on the grounds that people don't kill people, guns do ....
.... oops, uh, nevermind.
It's people with that attitude that are causing the problem with the ATF. If you've ever been to a launch you'd know the ability to aim these things at a target is nonexistant. They basically go up, but you couldn't deliberately hit something if you tried without a miracle. The fuel itself is not actually explosive - outside the motor tube it burns really slow. You could attach some other explosive, but you still couldn't deliver it accurately and that would be a different substance so no need to regulate the fuel.
Rocket fuel is no more dangerous than gasoline which is available on every corner in America. Probably less dangerous, as it's not a liquid.
but I once heard of the Brits arresting an Irishman for carrying a can of oil. Apparently it 'could have been used to clean guns.'
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Go to the gunshop and you can buy kegs of gunpowder,even through the mail. The NRA would put Bush out of business if he cracked down on that . So the regs are useless if your going to disallow one and allow the other.
An idea for you high powered rocket guys is to go with a method of fueling rockets with gunpowder.
I wonder what the gov would do then ?
Of course this same argument can be made for anything. I mean making a basic gun is easy -- long tube, black powder, and a projectile. Sure, it'll be inaccurate and the range will be crap, but the same thinking goes. Ultimately nothing can be totally prevented, but it just putting up barriers.
As far as rocketry goes, if these type of regulations were put on other types of explosives (they are) there would be no fuss. It is just because it impacts something near and dear to our hearts that it seems so intolerable.
Think of the complaints people made for sport shooting and hunting when gun restrictions (something most slashdotters seem to embrace) were enacted. Same basic premise, completely different reaction from the slashdot crowd.
--Kevin
I agree with your post, but where was the left's outrage on violations of the 10th amendment 30 years ago, (hell, 60 years ago)? It was "progressive" congressmen and pliant Supreme Court justices who changed the interpretation of the Commerce Clause to mean "anything Congress wants to do, Congress can do". I don't like the status quo either, but let's all keep in mind that it was politicians enamored with redistribution and central planning who paved the way for the Federal government to become the leviathan that it is today.
Well, you're half right. What's important isn't controlling model rockets. It's controlling explosives, which happen to be used in model rockets. The ATF didn't decide to clamp down on the hobby of model rocketry to pacify the citizerny-- that's an idiotic scenario even for the average conspiracy theorist. Model rocket enthusiasts are catching a side-effect of new explosives regulation because they use explosives in their hobby.
It sounds like the ATF may have been overzealous in creating those new regulations, and that those regulations may have had unintended (or disregarded) side effects, but you're going way out of your way to justify an assumption of maliciousness here.
or do geeks only care that they can frag aliens online?
i swear, half the kids in my dorm who would be bragging about headshots in CS looked damn near terrified when i asked them if they wanted to go to the range to shoot *gasp* REAL guns.
Was that just a characteristic of my dorm, or the geek cultrue as a whole?
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams
First they came for the big ass rockets and I did not speak out because I don't use them Then they came for the bla bla bla, you know the rest.
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Stop all the silly suggestions as if such a rocket will be used to "shoot down a plane".
Is it really so hard to image that using "high-powered rockets, which can be 30 feet long and weigh hundreds of pounds -- with some flying more than 60 miles or reaching speeds over 1,000 miles per hour" can be used as a weapon?
Someone rolls up 15 miles outside of DC, fires a salvo of these rockets with 10 lb. of explosive on each and disappears before the first one even hits?
Sure, they won't do much damage but that is the point of terrorism. Terrorism can't win a war by itself, it requires the other party to lose the will to fight.
It amazes me that people think that building a rocket weighing "hundreds of pounds" or flying over 60 miles is "a hobby.
The really interesting thing is that over 1/2 of the replies to this topic are simply knee jerk anti-Bush rants.
If you can't see that a 30 ft rocket that can fly over 60 miles needs to have some type of regulation then I can't help you.
A rocket is pretty much a controlled bomb. Every joule spent on proplusion is a joule not spent on explosive. An amateur might be able to cobble together a rocket which would fly vaguely where the builder pointed it over a distance of a maybe a few miles, but the "warhead" would likely be only a few pounds. (plus the kinetic energy of the rocket.) If you took the same rocket fuel, and used it to make a big-ass truck bomb, you'd gain several magnitudes of precision and lethality.
Rockets are good for putting a small amount of explosive in a place you can't easily access. Since we're not going to outlaw trucks, fertilizer, and diesel fuel any time soon, the best way to "terrorize" the people remains.
Ultimately I'd much prefer the "evil doers" put their energy into exotic ideas like homemade rockets rather than simple ones like truck bombs and the classic "cheap-assault-rifle-and-a-crowd". The number of victims would be lower.
Someone could make a weapon out of rocketry supplies, but anyone with the skills to build a halfway decent rocket could build a pretty impressive bomb a lot easier.
I've got no problem with there being limitations of people's ability to build, say, something which uses propellant measured in pounds (or tons). When it's clear the rocket poses a clear threat if accidents occur or it is intentionally misused. But people should still be able to build smaller things without massive hurdles.
I don't want to get much into guns because it is a bit of a charged subject. The issue is where do we set limits between the right to bear a squirt-pistol and the right to bear crew-served artillery? Obviously there needs to be a ceiling somewhere, but quantifying it is hard.
The question is where do you set the ceiling? And what are reasonable requirements for people who wish to exceed it? Model-rocketry is heading towards the squirt-pistol range of the scale...
I hate the way the government has perverted the interstate commerce clause. To my mind that has been the biggest erosion of rights this country has ever had. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence should be able to understand the intent of the clause, "to regulate commerce between the states". Now it has become a catch-all for any federal law, and a judicial test is no longer required.
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But I don't consider storing explosives and building a 30 foot rocket that can travel 60 miles to be the equivalent of "rock climbing" or "skydiving".
High-power rocketry may have a higher level of hazard to bystanders, but it's probably less useful in terrorism than knowing how to shoot and drive fast. A stolen car can deliver a much bigger warhead much more accurately than a homemade rocket. The rocket builders are being singled out because they are a small enough group to regulate without causing an uproar, not because their rockets are especially useful to terrorists.
Back to what I was trying to say in my previous post, making society absolutely safe and secure is impossible. Every increase in security and safety comes with an equal and opposite loss of convenience and freedom. Our elected leaders will never say anything about that, presidents and congresspeople don't get re-elected by telling the voters they can't be safe. So, the BATFE is under a lot of pressure from political leaders pushing this "myth of security" to do something about terrorism and this is apparently the best they could come up with.
0 1 - just my two bits
Gee, you begin to think that maybe prohibition isn't the solution to every problem we face?
My primary hobby is machine gun collecting and shooting. Let me tell you the fun of throwing down $10-20k, finger printing, filling out forms, then waiting 3 months for a background check for the opportunity to pay a $200 tax so I can own one of a class of firearms by which *ZERO* people have been killed by civilians in the entire 70 year history of NFA firearms.
Meanwhile, John Q. Gangbanger buys a MAC-10 on the corner for $50 and hoses down whoever.
It makes you think maybe we should outlaw killing people.