The real private space program is happening in garages across America.
It's early summer, 1994. I've come to Battle Park '94, an annual high-power rocket launch in Culpeper, Virginia. I want to see what the world of model rockets has been up to since I left the hobby in the 1970s. This weekend's event has drawn some 1,500 spectators from 31 states. We all park our lawn chairs and coolers in a cordoned-off viewing area and settle down to watch the home-brew fireworks. From here, we'll be able to see as many of the 489 blastoffs as we can stand.
The sky is a soft, clear blue. The field that hosts the meet is a hard, dusty, exhausted-looking piece of American farmland. The sun is sweltering. Everyone's just sitting and sweating, heads permanently tilted skyward, squinting in anticipation of the next big takeoff. The engine sounds are shockingly loud, each launch fraught with a sense of anticipation, danger, and a little twitch of excitement as the missiles scream to altitudes of up to 2.5 miles. Each rocket is quickly out of sight. Spectators hold their breaths until they hear a tiny "poof" sound, signaling that the parachute has popped out. When the rocket reappears, its owner rushes to the anticipated touchdown as everyone claps and points out the path of descent.
The place is a beehive of activity; plenty of booths sell food, and others display rocket kits, parts, magazines, engines, and T-shirts. Care to buy a 4 1/2-foot plastic nose cone? It's a steal of a deal at only US$98! There's a carnival atmosphere here, a carnival for nerds. The popular T-shirt of the day reads: "As a matter of fact, I am a rocket scientist."
Long lines of mostly men and boys - with jumbo rockets proudly tucked under their arms - march out to the three launch areas. (Sigmund Freud, call your office.) Some are so large they require two people to carry them to the pad. The launch areas contain rows of metal tripods, topped by round blast plates with tall launch rods protruding from their centers. Of the three areas, the one farthest from the crowd, Area C, is set aside for the really high-power craft. These rockets stand from 6 feet to 12 feet tall when upright on the pads. Their makers crouch beside them, connecting wire clips to igniters sticking out from each rocket's motor (actually, often several motors in a cluster).
In basic model rocketry (the kind you may remember from your childhood), engine sizes are designated with letters A, B, C, D, and E, with each letter denoting twice as much power as the previous one. In the high-power rockets flown nowadays, engine sizes range from F to O. Depending on the weight and design of the rocket, clustered combinations of these motors can take a rocket to an altitude of between 10,000 and 20,000 feet (about 2 to 4 miles). Today's launch has a ceiling of 15,000 feet, because of the size of the field and its proximity to populated areas.
Once a rocket is all wired up to a central launch-control system, an announcer describes the rocket on the pad and begins a short countdown. The launch-control officer thumbs a switch, and electricity from a 12-volt battery flows to the igniter wires snaked into the business end of the motor. When enough juice is received and a spark is produced - SCHHHEWWW - the rocket blazes skyward. Unlike a kiddie model rocket, which leaves only a slight trail of exhaust, these vehicles generate copious smoke and hellfire.
Serious accidents are surprisingly rare in model and high-power rocketry. (When one does occur, rocketeers don't like to talk to journalists about it.) Although outright explosions are uncommon, there are plenty of crashes, misfires, and the occasional "land shark," which occurs when a rocket, still under full power, lands on the ground and begins skidding, leaping, and plowing its way through the dirt. If humans are caught in the rocket's path, things can get dicey. Another hazard is a "core sampler" or "yard dart" - when a rocket malfunctions and heads back to earth, drilling itself into the ground.
Here at Batlle Park '94, the air is choked with burned rocket fuel. Long ribbons of smoke from the last few launches linger, drifting off toward the tree line. The announcer - er, "Launch Control" - starts running down the stats of the next vehicle on Pad C. It's a deluxe model, with air- start ignition (some of the engines are ignited later in the burn), radio- controlled chute deployment, and a cluster of very powerful engines. As he lists the engines' sizes and burn times, the crowd "oohs" and "ahs." Onlookers sit a little straighter in their lawn chairs as the countdown begins. A fire engine from the Rapidan Volunteer Fire Department inches to the edge of the launch area. People are on their feet now. The rocket makes an obscene roar and plows into the sky. In an instant, it's gone. Completely out of sight. The crowd gasps and giggles. Launch Control shouts: "Folks, that one's headin' for orbit!"
Roll Your Own Space Program
Well, that one may not be headed for orbit, but how much bigger and more powerful would a rocket have to be before it could reach the 50-mile boundary of space? That's a question every rocket hobbyist ponders. Even though high-power rockets are many times larger and more sophisticated than the rockets I fooled around with as a kid, the highest recorded launch is still only 39,000 feet (that's a little more than 7 miles, the realm of commercial airliners).
Is it even possible that a group of weekend rocket scientists working out of their basements and garages on shoestring budgets could actually launch a vehicle high enough to reach space? The National Space Society, a Washington, DC-based grass-roots space advocacy organization, thinks so. The national group recently struck a deal with the Pacific Rocket Society, a Southern California amateur rocket club, offering to finance the society's launch of the world's first amateur space vehicle. The deal calls for the society to design, build, and launch a rocket capable of delivering a 10-kilogram payload to an altitude of 80 kilometers (about 50 miles). The Pacific Rocket Society has also agreed to simultaneously build a second space-capable vehicle to launch if the first one fails. And what will such a garage space program cost? "We've raised $10,000 to cover fuel and materials," says Margaret Jordan, a National Space Society vice president and the mastermind behind the project. "That doesn't count the labor being provided by PRS, which would cost at least $50,000."
Amateur Right Stuff
Within the world of home-brew rocketry are three basic categories: model rocketry, high-power rocketry, and amateur - or experimental - rocketry. Model rocketry refers to the small rockets people tend to associate with Scout jamborees, grade-school science classes, and the Estes Industries rocket catalog that was advertised in the backs of comic books in the '60s and '70s. Estes is still around, and is still the main model rocket maker in the US. With an estimated 1.5 million model rocketeers nationwide, the hobby continues to thrive. Although plastic parts and pre-assembled models are more common, most rockets are still built from cardboard, balsa wood, glue, and paint and are powered by commercially manufactured black-powder motors. Making your own motors and using metal parts are still considered big no-nos by the National Association of Rocketry, the organization overseeing the hobby and setting its safety standards. Altitudes reached by these tiny spacecraft haven't changed much either - 2,000 feet is still considered a high flight.
High-power rocketry became official in 1986, when the Tripoli Rocket Association was formed. This national organization was created to meet the needs of a growing breed of hobby rocketeers seeking more power and fewer restrictions on weight, materials, and launch altitudes. These hobbyists wanted to push the bounds of the possible and move up a rung on the ladder of sophistication and altitude. In high-power rocketry, the engines are still commercially manufactured, never homemade. They're a composite of ammonium perchlorate and synthetic rubber, the same materials used in the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters. They are powerful enough to carry 6- to 10-foot rockets to altitudes of 10,000 to 20,000 feet. While model rockets cost only a few dollars to build and fly, high-power rockets can cost hundreds to build and sometimes thousands to fly (for the biggest motors). High-power also makes more extensive use of micro-electronics, on- board computers, radio-controlled recovery systems, and even miniature video cameras. High-power enthusiasts come from all walks of life. Many are employed in the aerospace industry or are frustrated armchair space engineers wanting a piece, however modest, of the action.
Garage space efforts start to get interesting in the realm of what's called "amateur rocketry." Here, the rules of the air established by the National Association of Rocketry are abandoned in favor of experimentation with metal airframes; homemade, often liquid fuels; and flights logging significant mileage. The faint-hearted would not dare undertake such a serious, often dangerous, endeavor.
Which brings us back to the Pacific Rocket Society.
A group of experimental rocketeers, the Pacific Rocket Society is one of the oldest rocket clubs in the country. Its membership includes a large number of engineers and aerospace students, who trace their lineage to the Glendale Rocket Society, an experimental rocketry group formed in the 1940s. Over the years, the group has undertaken a number of projects aimed at exploring the limits of amateur space technology. Members have always fantasized that one day their efforts might culminate in a full-blown space launch. Since 1985, they have been working with liquid-propelled rockets in the hopes of building a high-altitude vehicle. In 1987, a rocket they designed and built around a nitric acid/furfuryl alcohol engine reached an altitude estimated at 20,000 feet. In 1990, they began work on a new project, a rocket they dubbed HARV (High Altitude Research Vehicle). Although they were confident HARV could reach an altitude of 100,000 feet (about 19 miles), the rocket was never completed. It will probably be used in some fashion as a test vehicle for the upcoming amateur space launch.
The society has divided into two groups, each working on the design of a space-capable vehicle. The vehicle that Pacific Rocket Society President Charles Pooley gets excited about is the Spacefarer X80 (X80 meaning exceeding 80 kilometers, or about 50 miles). The preliminary design for the vehicle marks the height of simplicity and funky makeshift ingenuity. It uses cheap, readily available materials such as aluminum tubing for its liquid propellant tanks. Featuring an unconventional "tube- bundle" design, the single-stage rocket will be fueled by liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol. Other innovations include an "air- braking" system of little pop-out panels to help decelerate the rocket at peak altitude. Many of the electronic components, possibly including the "fluxgate magnetometer" used for steering the glider, will come from the neighborhood Radio Shack. The liquid oxygen will be purchased from a local welding-supply house. Finished and ready for launch, the amateur vehicle will be about 20 feet high and 13 inches wide and will weigh in at about 600 pounds.
At the heart of the Spacefarer's payload will be a 6303 computer brain with a whopping 8Kbyte of memory, connected to a Rockwell Global Positioning System, an accelerometer, an altimeter, and other sensors and status switches. A microgravity experiment, being prepared by a group from Mexico, may also hitch a ride on the vehicle. A video camera in the nose cone will downlink images to amateur television equipment on the ground. The ground- control system will be nothing more than a laptop PC. The entire payload is being designed by Duncan Cumming, a ham radio operator living in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.
The Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum has already contacted the group about acquiring the Spacefarer X80 to display as the first amateur space vehicle. That is, if it flies, if it reaches space, and if it is recovered. Big ifs.
Educational Space
"This is just the beginning," says the always optimistic Pooley. "We hope this will raise the level of aspirations for other amateur rocketeers and stimulate a new type of grass-roots access to space." If the Pacific Rocket Society's launch (also called AmSpace I) is successful, it may be followed by an AmSpace II rocket, capable of taking 100 pounds to more than 100 miles. The National Space Society also sees as the long-term goal of this project a new level of interest in amateur and educational space efforts. "Right now there is no category for what's being done here," says Margaret Jordan. "In the eyes of the Department of Transportation, which licenses all space launches, you're either a commercial or a government entity. We would like to have a new category established - with special guidelines and regulations - for educational institutions and amateur researchers interested in developing new space technologies."
Chuck Kline, from the Commercial Space Transportation office of the Department of Transportation, says that such new guidelines and regulations are being studied. The department established guidelines for model rocketry in the mid-'80s, but the ambitions of today's amateur space groups have far surpassed the launch specifications addressed in those aging policies. "Those standards were set so that we wouldn't have to oversee every hobby launch in the country. Now, with the growth of amateur flights, although the numbers are still small, we're getting too many requests for launch waivers and we don't know how to handle them. We need to re-examine this whole area." The Department of Transportation is currently reviewing the joint amateur space launch.
At Space News, a weekly newspaper covering the space industry, reporter Andrew Lawler is sympathetic to the joint project but has questions about how the government will respond to a burgeoning amateur space movement. "I have a feeling this just hasn't caught the attention of anyone in the State Department," Lawler tells me. "The government is keenly interested in preventing the international migration of missile technology. The educational benefits are obvious, but the government may not be very enthusiastic about losing control over this type of development."
The National Space Society is sympathetic to government concerns. "They certainly wouldn't want powerful missile-sized rockets over US airspace without their knowledge," says Jordan. "But we're talking about responsible research and development. This is noble work in the tradition of Robert Goddard and other early rocket pioneers."
The affable Charlie Gunn, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's director of launch vehicles, doesn't see an immediate problem with an increase in amateur space activity. "If these guys think they can do it, I think that's wonderful!" he says enthusiastically. "But hitting the boundary of space is one thing. If they think they're gonna get something into a usable orbit, that's something completely different. Then you get yourself into trouble in terms of amateurs flying vehicles over other countries. By UN agreement, if a rocket from one country lands in another country, the country of origin is liable. Having some rocket club's amateur spacecraft land in someone else's backyard, let's say, Cuba - now that would be a little embarrassing."
Is "Big Space" Shrinking?
"The shuttle program broke the back of NASA!" So proclaims a participant in a discussion on America Online about the state of the US space program. Others echo this sentiment with disparaging remarks about irresponsible and unfocused leadership, overly complex and grossly expensive vehicles, and the resulting lack of public faith in NASA. "The only interesting things that've happened recently are the Hubble repair job and Clementine," says another contributor.
Clementine (see "A New Sense Organ for the Net," Wired 2.06, page 29) was the recent moon-mapping mission undertaken by a group of former star warriors at the military-backed Ballistic Missile Defense Organization who wanted to snub their noses at a bureaucratically strangled, out-of- touch NASA. The partially successful mission was completed for $75 million (dirt cheap) and its mission control was a warehouse in a rundown section of Alexandria, Virginia. While the mission has sparked much public debate over why the military would undertake such a project, most space enthusiasts agree that the modest cost and the innovative low-end approach are heartening.
Clementine seems to have sparked enthusiasm in the space community, suggesting that "cheaper, faster, better" may be more than just a Star Wars-era sound bite.
In fields from artificial intelligence to robotics, top-down centralization is yielding to bottom-up, decentralized, and small-scale approaches. Could widespread availability of cheap materials and powerful electronics, greater access to technical information and expertise, and the ability to coordinate efforts over the Net spur a similar revolution in space development?
Recent trends within the space industry are pointing to increasing interest in a "small is pragmatic" approach. There's a whole new breed of small launch vehicles, such as Orbital Sciences's Pegasus and Lockheed's LLV, being developed for low-cost space trucking. These vehicles can provide transportation to an emerging small satellite industry, typified by programs like Motorola's Iridium Project and the Globalstar effort. This new generation of small, low, Earth-orbiting communications satellites can provide instantaneous voice and data links anywhere on the planet. A number of space engineers are even proposing the idea of chip-sized satellites. Microminiaturization would allow orbiting battery-powered microchips to handle many of the functions of a larger conventional satellite. Swarms of these micro-sats could then be synchronized to function together - as a huge antenna, for instance.
Amateur Satellites?
Several other amateur groups are also eyeballing the stars from their garages. Another California group, the Reaction Research Society, is experimenting with a 10,000-pound-thrust, liquid-propellant engine that could be used as part of a future launch vehicle. A number of the society's members work in the space industry, and they take their amateur efforts seriously. They maintain a surprisingly sophisticated launching and test area in the Mojave Desert (which the Pacific Rocket Society also uses). Reaction Research was recently approached by AeroAstro Corp., a Virginia- based small-satellite company, about building a micro-sat launch vehicle engine. Rick Fleeter, president of AeroAstro, got his start as an amateur, building breadbox-sized satellites on his kitchen table.
Amateur satellites like Fleeter's have been around for years; in fact, there's an international organization of hobby satellite builders called AMSAT. Members design and build functioning experimental communications satellites and then cadge rides for them on US, European, Russian, and Japanese government flights. There are about a half-dozen of these amateur sats currently in orbit. Some of them function as "flying mailboxes," allowing ham radio operators to connect a computer to ham gear and upload e-mail messages for later downloading onto the Internet.
If any of the amateur rocket groups successfully reach orbit, one can imagine putting these two programs together and creating a new, ultracheap space transportation system to deliver tiny satellites into orbit. But that's still pure fantasy. While increasingly sophisticated amateur space activities may eventually converge with the downsizing end of commercial and government space, Charles Pooley points out that a low-end commercial launch vehicle is some 100 times heavier and more powerful than a rocket like the Spacefarer.
Still, space payloads are shrinking. According to NASA's Charlie Gunn, the agency will soon seek bids on a new ultralight launch vehicle that will be one-half the size of Pegasus, the small fry of launch vehicles. "The payloads are movin' down," he says. "Everything's getting smaller and more lightweight."
The Little Rocket That Might
So, what is the launch date of America's first amateur space shot? That depends on who you talk to. Pacific Rocket Society member George Morgan first told Wired it would be "Thanksgiving weekend." "The launch date is the 5th of ASAP," chuckles an unflappable Pooley. Given the laid-back nature of the project, and the fact that at press time they don't even have a launch waiver from the Department of Transportation, even the November date seems optimistic. But who knows? In the world of amateur space, all you need are some ferocious all-nighters, a few phone calls, and a sunny day - and you might end up in the launch vehicle business.
For more information, contact Charles Pooley of the Pacific Rocket Society at ckp@netcom.com or check out the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space's World Wide Web page: http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/seds/seds.html.
