LUNAR’clips 2003                        Volume 10, Number 3

Copyright © 2003 by LUNAR, All rights reserved.

Rocketeers in Jackets

On Tuesday, May 13^th, members of LUNAR and AeroPac met with Michael Walker, a field representative on Senator Feinstein's staff, to discuss Senator Enzi's rocketry exemption bill, S.724. Senator Feinstein is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary committee, which is handling the S.724, so she is obviously a crucial person to win over to our side. This is my attempt at a report on that meeting.

The original idea for the meeting came from either Mike Yamamoto or Gabe Bilek. Mike Yamamoto was our liaison with the Senator's office getting the meeting scheduled. Attendees at the meeting were Tony Alcocer, Gabriel Bilek, Steve Preston and Mike Yamamoto (all from AeroPac), Professor Bob Twiggs from Stanford, Jack Hagerty, illustrious president of LUNAR, and myself. Others who helped out in the planning stages were Tom Rouse, Chuck Piper, Charles Winter of LUNAR, Charley Garvin and Leslie Saul, friends of mine with lobbying experience provided input, and various members of AeroPac helped out with last-minute proofreading and suggestions on our presentation. Apologies to anyone I've left out.

Our planning notes, a copy of the final presentation, and pictures of rocketeers in suits can be found at:

http://www.eebert.com/Rockets/Feinstein/

Overall, the meeting went very well. It started out a little unfocused, but settled down very quickly. Michael Walker seemed attentive and interested. Steve Preston led the presentation, and did a great job.

We covered at a very high level why it is incorrect to classify Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant (APCP) as an explosive. Basically APCP functions by a controlled release of gas for propulsion, not by explosion. Tony brought along a large hobby reload casing and a small 29mm RMS casing. Same composition, but one is an explosive and the other is not?

We tried to emphasis the impact of the HSA on the aerospace industry, to tie it into the California economy. The HSA will have affect current workers on H1 visas who won't be able to touch live satellites because they can't get a LEUP, and the loss of education will affect the future availability of engineers. While unemployment is way up in most sectors, Lockheed has large job listings that they already can't find qualified people to fill, for example. The result is an acceleration of the current loss of technology and launch capability to other countries. We mentioned the CSA endorsement of S.724

Tony went into detail on his odyssey in trying to get a LEUP. Over 60 hours of time during work the workweek, a round trip to Sacramento, over $237 just in fees (and that doesn't count gas, other expenses, and time off work), and $200-400 for an explosives magazine, and he still doesn't have his LEUP. And he's a professional firefighter with more experience in the processes involved than most.

Professor Twiggs covered the ARLISS program. He brought in a couple of deceased ARLISS payloads and an empty cubesat, which Michael took a lot of interest in.

Around the forty-five minutes into our allotted hour, Michael Walker started asking, "Are we about done here?" At that point we turned to Jack Hagerty, and who covered the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC), and his interest picked right up again. Jack had brought in letters sent to Trip Barber (NAR Vice President, and head administrator of TARC) from parents of Team America participants. Tony mentioned the positive impact involvement with rocketry has had on his son AJ, and that seemed to particularly impress Mr. Walker. Nothing like a first-hand testimonial.

As we were leaving, we handed him a documentation package with pictures from Team America and ARLISS, the text of the Enzi, bill and Senator Enzi's speech when he introduced the bill, and contact information, along with some other pages printed out from the web. Steve volunteered to be the primary contact at AeroPac.

I thought the pacing was very good, we made good use of our available hour and covered everything we wanted to cover, and we seemed to hold his interest very well. He obviously wasn't going to commit to recommending that Senator Feinstein support S724, but he did say he would talk to "the people back East," and look into the issue, which is about the best we could expect. A very positive experience. Thanks to everyone involved!

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