LUNAR’clips
2003
Volume 10, Number 2
LUNAR’clips
2003
Volume 10, Number 2
Livermore Unit of the National Association of Rocketry March/April 2003
Copyright © 2003 by LUNAR, All rights reserved.
This column now makes two in a row on important, but unpleasant subjects. I hope that before long I can get back to talking about the more enjoyable aspects of the hobby.
By now I'm sure that most of you are aware that the Homeland Security Act (HSA) has been enacted and will be in full effect by next month. It has a clause in there that directly impacts our hobby, even though that was not the original intent. Before I get started on the description, let me say that there is a tremendous amount of political churning going on right now, and by the time you read this, even though it will only be a few days from now, I'm sure whatever I say will be out of date. If you want up-to-the-minute information on this topic, you're not going to get it from a bi-monthly newsletter column. I would recommend logging onto any of several on-line discussion groups for pointers to the latest updates. If you don't know which ones, then just ask on our own "lunar.general" and someone (probably several someones) will be glad to point you in the right direction.
In an effort to control access to explosives, for obvious reasons, the HSA imposes restrictions on the purchase and transport all explosives. Unfortunately, the committee that drafted the act simply grabbed the list of "explosives" from the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives). While I'm sure that seemed reasonable to the people doing it, they probably didn't know that the NAR and Tripoli have jointly been suing the BATFE for the past three years over Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant (APCP, commonly called "composite propellant" in the hobby) being on the list. APCP is not an explosive. If it were, then all the rockets using it would blow up when you push the button, not fly.
While the HSA does not ban APCP, it requires anyone buying and transporting it (which means both the shipping companies and you, the user) to have a use permit. To get this permit requires fingerprinting, background checks, and all the stuff that you'd expect when buying a firearm. As you might imagine, not many casual fliers would be willing to submit to this, and even worse, all of the shipping companies would have to do it for every employee who might come in contact with a package containing composite motors (which is to say every employee). Even though black powder motors aren't affected, nor are motors with less than 62.5 grams of propellants in them, the shipping companies (UPS, FedEx, etc.) are not going to bother splitting legislative hairs and have already announced that they will simply stop shipping all hobby rocket motors.
Don't go selling all of your hobby stuff just yet, there's hope in the form of a bill by Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming. Senator Enzi's bill would specifically exempt hobby rocket motors from the permit restrictions of the HSA. It was introduced to the floor of the Senate last week (March 28) and carries the number S. 724. Twelve other Senators have signed on as co-sponsors. Please contact our Senators, Feinstein and Boxer asking them to support the bill. Of the two, Feinstein is the more important. She is both the ranking Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, where S.724 is currently sitting, and the ranking Democrat on the judiciary subcommittee on Homeland Security. She would obviously be a key Senator to get on our side. Please see the LUNAR website (www.lunar.org) for contact information.
Here's another acronym for you to learn. NPRM is "Notice for Proposed Rule Making" and is the official government procedure for making up regulations. It's what the BATFE was supposed to do (but didn't) when regulating our hobby, and is one of the reasons the NAR and Tripoli are suing them. They're doing it now, and the rules they are proposing are very restrictive. NAR president Mark "Bunny" Bundick has some "bullet points" that he and the lawyers are going to use in the ongoing fight, but is actively soliciting comments from section members, even if they don't belong to the NAR. His comments are too long to post in this column, so I'm sending them to Geoff as a separate short article. I hope he has room for it elsewhere. Please read the comments and respond to Bunny with any suggestions.
Yet another unfortunate fallout of this whole HSA thing has to do with the impact it's had on our new launch field search.
Many of you know, especially if you are on our on-line discussion lists, that we have been, through the efforts of member Charles Winter, negotiating to use a grazing field on a ranch near Tracy for our new High Power launch field. We were supposed to hold a "check-out" launch late last month or early this month to see how the well field works. When this whole HSA thing broke to a lot of publicity (our own Bill Orvis was featured on a news story on Channel 2), the owners of the ranch started worrying that if they let us fly from their field that they'll suddenly come under all sorts of unwanted government scrutiny. I can see why they're concerned, even though it's the materials (rocket motors), not the landowners that are covered by the act. Charles is currently trying to reschedule the test launch. I'll keep you informed.
In other launch field news, a home developer in Livermore is offering to donate 60 acres of land for a new city park off of Greenville Road, about three miles east of our current Robertson Park site (they're doing this in exchange for permission to develop a different parcel of land elsewhere in of town). This would be a good place for us to move to since all of the regulatory bodies involved (Fire Marshall, LARPD, FAA, etc.) are all the same and we have a long track record with all of them. Bill Orvis and I went to the public hearing on the project last Wednesday (April 2), and it is less hopeful than I originally though. Most of the other people at the meeting were very hostile to either the idea of a "Sports Park" invading their bucolic existence near the Poppy Ridge golf course, or to the development of homes at the other parcel. This means that the project will not be going through any time soon. It's probably at least three or four years away, realistically.
Just so this column doesn't turn out a total downer, I want to congratulate all of the TARC teams that came out to fly their projects at the special launches we set up for them. I also have to give a big public "thank you" to Lee Teicheira for taking over for me and running these launches while I was back east on business for the critical final two weeks. Thanks, too, to all of the volunteers who took the time to come out and support the kids (I'm afraid that if I try to list them all, I'll forget someone). We were even singled out for national recognition by Trip Barber, the NAR Vice-President and coordinator of the entire nation-wide TARC for our effort.
It's hard to say how many teams we helped out. Some that contacted us never reached the flying stage, but at least a dozen teams from as many schools came out to fly on our field, some from 100 miles away. The wonderful thing is that four of them made the finals, the top 100 teams out of more than 850 that entered. They will be traveling to Virginia next month for the fly-offs. That's 2.5% of all the qualifying teams for the entire country qualified on our field! The four teams are:
James Lick High School
Davis High School
Laguna Creek High School
Los Gatos High School
I would also like mention that two of those teams (James Lick and Los Gatos) were mentored by Charles Winter. I'm not sure if any of the other club in the country can make that claim.
(See the LUNAR Team America Challenge pages for pictures. ed.)
Finally, tying this back to the beginning of the column, the greatest unintended fallout of the entire TARC is its use as an example of the educational potential of the hobby. Nearly every single person petitioning their senators and other representatives to support Senator Enzi's bill references it, and points out that this wonderful teaching tool will go away if the hobby is any further restricted.
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