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Backyard Rocketeers Keep the Solid Fuel Burning
Jamie Clay points out a New York Times article about one sticky wicket faced by
members of the Tripoli Rocketry Association, whose members are some of the private citizens trying to bust into the space-launch business (or just having fun) by financing and building their own rockets.
An excerpt: "On Tuesday, lawyers representing Tripoli and the National Association of Rocketry and officials of the firearms bureau will head to Federal District Court in Washington to resolve the seven-year-old dispute over the hobbyists' use of a flammable propellant, ammonium perchlorate composite, or APCP. The chemical is the main ingredient on the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters. ... The firearms bureau classifies APCP as an explosive and, amid post-Sept. 11 security concerns, requires that anyone who uses more than two ounces of propellant undergo federal background checks."
Most of the people I know gave up at this point, or built small storage sheds that were up to code just to house their fuel which technically, according to the FBI, is not explosive anyway. (it burns rapidly, but does not explode, there IS a big difference actually)
(Disclaimer: I would have RTFA if it wasn't on the NYTimes.)
I know some guys making really big rockets, and they are using ammonium nitrate and aluminum with a binder, mixed in a blender. Doubt this would ever detonate by accident, AN takes a really big hit (more than a blasting cap) to go in this combination. It might be getting harder to get, though.
Yes, the background check is a pain (and in some cases I think you pay for it) but that requirement for a "magazine" is pretty stiff. It can't be in your house anyway, no worries there about being searched (the background check is worse anyway sometimes), but in a non-rural setting you're going to have a hard time finding a place "far enough away from people" to put one, and that is a requirement. I do some of this stuff here, in fairly small quantities, and had occaision to talk to the local BATFE guys about it. When they saw what I was doing they had no problem with it, is all I can say. Doesn't matter what the laws are if the cops are alright. Of course, you'd better have a nice big place to shoot nice big rockets anyway.
Heck, it's legal to have quite a quantity of smokeless powder for reloading, and that is darn powerful stuff, and can be detonated at least in small quantities. This is just one of those silly things about ignorant lawmakers (some of whom are unelected) trying to CoverTheirAxx.
For those not familiar with the term "sticky wicket", it is a cricketing term referring to the state of the cricket pitch. A sticky wicket is typically one that contains too much surface moisture, and can cause the ball to deviate unpredictably as it bounces in front of the batsman. A cricket ball is similar in size and mass to a baseball, and can be bowled at a batsman's body (or head :). Batting on a sticky wicket is a lot less fun than bowling (pitching) on it!
Why does someone NEED to build that kind of rocket. If the hobbyist can do it so can a Terrorist. If we can save just one life it will have been worth it.
Terrorists only win when they manage to terrorize people. You sir are a loser.
These restrictions will save no lives. Real terrorists with real funding will still have the freedom to carry out attacks while real people lose their freedom. A terrorist pulls an attack then you find him and buddies and hand out some hurt. The terrorists' paymasters and masterminds use young indoctrinated hotheads as their tools and mostly don't want to die themselves. See to it they die. This is how you fight terrorists. Taking freedoms away from people who aren't terrorists doesn't do a damn thing. Terrorists will just find another unplugged hole and put on another show. How we react determines whether they win or we win.
Terrorists love the likes of you. You give them victory on a silver platter.
whereas guided rockets are right out?
You are supposed to use your "dumb" rocket in rural areas far away from people and buildings. Who cares if you kill yourself, your fellow nerds, or a cow with it? Guided rockets on the other hand just might give people silly ideas about being able to deliver "payloads" with specific PK50's to "targets"...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No.
Human knowledge, as a whole, grows much more rapidly when our society encourages learning and exploration. Why did Robert Goddard need to launch his rockets? Why did Ben Franklin or Thomas Edison need to be playing with all that dangerous electricity? Why did Wilbur and Orville need to try to build something as silly and frivolous as a heavier-than-air, powered flying machine? But can you imaging living in a world where they hadn't? It is, to some degree, human nature to fear and disapprove of things we don't enjoy and don't understand, but the truth is that the quest for knowledge is a great and noble thing.
You are right, to a degree, that "if the hobbyist can do it, so can a terrorist" but name a single invention or scientific breakthrough that someone hasn't found a way to corrupt for evil purposes. Does that mean we should immediately cease all innovation? Should we put an end to the study of science because we might learn something that might one day end in the loss of someone's life? What if that same breakthrough could save hundreds of lives in a peaceful application?
I understand where you are coming from, but I disagree with your conclusion. I think following your logic to its conclusion is a dead-end solution.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I find it fairly silly that a relatively weak explosive like rocket fuel is monitored, restricted and so on when: A: you can buy black powder and other more powerful explosives without much fuss and B: any moron with half a brain and access to google can manufacture plastic explosives in a bathtub with the stuff under their sinks. If people want to make things go boom, they will find a way. I think the only real way to avoid terrorist bombings is to work to not piss them off to the point where they think its nessecary.
How about my cow-launching catapult?
The point of the lawsuit against the BATFE is not whether they should regulate explosives or conduct background checks. The point is that APCP is NOT AN EXPLOSIVE and SHOULD NOTT BE REGULATED AS SUCH.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
These ridiculous restrictions on chemicals sounds familiar, I've run into the same thing in my trade, photographic printing.
I work in antique photochemistry processes, and the chemicals I've used are now subject to regulation by the Department of Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Agency. Just last month, I was checking prices at the same supplier I've used for 30 years, and to reorder the same old chemicals, now I have to file DHS forms with the vendor, including a copy of my photo ID, the location where I will store the chemicals, a detailed description of the chemical formula I use, and a waiver allowing the DHS and DEA to inspect the records at will. I phoned the supplier and asked about these forms, and they said, "oh don't worry about it, we've only had DHS inspect the records 2 or 3 times." Oh I feel so much better after hearing that.
So now I know why the processes I use have almost completely disappeared in the last few years. Nobody wants to subject themselves to scrutiny by the DHS just to make a few prints. The really stupid thing about this is, the chemicals on the restricted list aren't really the most dangerous ones, you can buy stuff from the same supplier that's way more hazardous without filing any paperwork.
I have it on good authority that the 9-11 terrorists were wearing deodorant that day, thus allowing them their calm and cool (and fresh smelling) exterior to belie their true, nefarious, intent.
(South Carolina is an interesting place to live, if you like conspiracy theories.)
To argue that a few ounces of rocket fuel - which, if correctly stored, is not prone to spontaneous combustion - is more dangerous than a huge stockpile of explosives that are liable to turn a sizable area into a smoking crater is plainly laughable. This has nothing to do with it being "residential". What an area is labelled is of no consequence. It is how the area is used that matters. A "residential" hilltop that's a hundred miles from the next house would still require these restrictions, but it is still perfectly legal to place hundreds of lives at risk when people find loopholes that allow them to make more money. THAT is what I object to.
I would certainly not want more than a few ounces of potentially explosive OR high-temp incendiary material anywhere near a highly populated area, unless emergency crews are damn certain of where it is and experts in such matters are absolutely convinced that all the proper precautions are being taken, WHATEVER the area may be designated as. Designations that mean nothing are worth nothing. Equally, if someone is reasonably isolated (given the total mass of material stored), then I don't see that it's anybody's business how it is kept. That is strictly between them and their insurance agency.
The maximum mass, however, should not be some random amount, no matter what the circumstances. That sort of regulation is way too easy for abuse all around. Rather, I would say that the maximum mass of explosive or incendiary material should be strictly determined by how much mass would be required to place the nearest uninvolved person at an unreasonable extra risk. In the case of incendiary material, this might be how much would be required to make a reasonable evacuation of an ajoining building or apartment (if there is one) impossible within an accepted timeframe. If there's nothing that could catch fire directly from the material, then it is utterly irrelevent as to how much there is, from a safety standpoint.
With explosive material, it's slightly tougher, but the same basic standards should apply. If an explosion occured, what would this ACTUALLY mean to those in the vicinity? It takes far more force to propell a solid stone wall outwards with significant momentum than, say, for vinyl or chipboard walls. As stone doesn't generally burn very well, the risk of a fire spreading is also much less. It should be simple enough to calculate the force that the outside wall could take before being a safety hazard and then derive the maximum safe mass of any explosive you liked from that.
The practical upshot, however, is that regulations are required to keep people safe but excess regulations actually keep people unsafe by promoting abuses. The easiest way to resolve this, in my humble(ish) opinion, would be to have State-run storage facilities and launch facilities for amateur rocketeers, where those facilities are guaranteed to be isolated enough to not impact the population at large, but where anyone can carry out high-power rocketry with no further intervention. By "no further", I mean that. No surveilance, no special permits, no unlawful searches, no harassment of any kind whatsoever, and no compulsion whatsoever for amateur rocketeers to use them. Such a location should merely be a site that all and sundry could be absolutely and unconditionally assured were absolutely at own-risk where the only thi
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I feel MUCH better about letting a rocket hobbyist have some regulated propellants than I do about letting random jackasses buy a considerably more energetic and unregulated one. Particularly given that most rocket fuels are designed to NOT detonate, something gasoline is more than happy to do under even the slightest confinement.
I work with the Portland State Aerospace Society. We build open source rockets, in every sense of the term: you can find all the details of our work on our site, including software, avionics designs, airframe schematics, and engine/propulsion work. We currently use ammonium perchlorate engines, and we do indeed have to deal with these issues, which prove quite onerous. For this reason, our propulsion team currently has as their primary project the development of a hybrid paraffin and liquid oxygen motor. Both of these components have no regulatory issues whatsoever: the paraffin wax came from a craft store, and the liquid oxygen came from a welding supply store (or with the right equipment, you could make it yourself). Their test-fires have gone quite well; in addition to testing paraffin/GOX, they've also test-fired salami/GOX, which actually provided more thrust than the paraffin prototype tested that particular day. :)
That just leaves us having to deal with any restrictions on active guidance that get thrown our way, which we'll deal with when we finish our active-guidance prototype.
There *is* a difference however. Solid rocket fuel by itself contains enough oxygen to sustain combustion, whereas the bottle of alcohol in my bathroom doesn't. Rocket fuel will burn fine under water, alcohol won't. Which is kinda troublesome if you want to extinguish it.
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Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
If he HAD arguments, I would see it as unfair for him to lose his karma. However, when he posts without arguments and instead just throw out feelings, I find it reasonable for him to lose his bonus. His posts are a net negative contribution.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
This is just one more circumstance where the gov't exploits the ignorance of citizens with simple "rocket bad - go boom" arguements akin to Orwell's "Four legs good, two legs bad". Other posters have pointed out how other household chemicals and (of course) gasoline can make nice booms too. What hasn't been mentioned, is how EVERYTHING is a chemical! Ever seen a silo explode? Ever tossed flour into a fire? (Don't DO this - it's dangerous) You can level buildings with little more than it takes to bake a cake. It doesn't take a lot of brains or education to kill someone or wreak havoc in a "civilized" but panicky society. No amount of regulation is going to stop people from coming up with ways to make explosions. All these regulations accomplish is the generation of irrational fears and the erosion of innocuous but "related" civil rights. They merely make people more fearful, and more irrational so that the next time someone says "boo" more regulations and restrictions can be placed upon each of us "for our own protection from ourselves".
He who would be a man, must be a nonconformist. -- Emerson
I work for the company that makes the Space Shuttle's solid booster rockets (in a different area of the same plant). Shortly after I was hired I attended a demonstration where they lit some AP. It just fizzled and barely burned. Then they brought out an old boot that they had soaked in AP and lit it. The boot exploded. AP by itself usually doesn't do much. AP contaminating flammable material like sawdust, wood, paper, clothing can be really nasty. AP will also detonate if contained or prepared a certain way. It's also true that some material burns very nicely, but will detonate when exposed to static or impact.
If you think that AP is harmless, you should check out this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEPCON_disaster
AP is easy to disrespect because there's a lot of evidense that it doesn't do much, but a stupid mistake with it can be deadly.
It kills me that people try to use the factoid about the temp at which jet fuel burns to try and prove something about the towers collapsing.
Hint: Steel doesn't need to "melt" to lose almost all of its structural strength. "Melt" means to go from a solid to a liquid. All the girders needed to do was soften a little bit, at a temperature far below the burning temp of the jet fuel. Anyone who's worked steel knows this, and it isn't exactly hard to look up. Ask ANY engineer.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
Or blacksmith. Forging would be impossible if steel didn't soften at a temperature significantly below that of its melting point.
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