An octogenarian, I've observed a couple of clear and distinct
attitudes about, and approaches to experimental rocketry. Before
plastics came into general use, and long before the first Estes rocket
motor, amateur "space travel" was confined to pyrotechnics propulsion,
or stick-and-tissue balsa aeromodelling. Wilmot and Mansour blended
the two arts with Jetex propulsion in 1949, powered by solid
propellant originally developed for anti-aircraft target drones by
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in Scotland. Both Wilmot and
Mansour worked at ICI, on that project.
www.Jetex.org
The early rocket-propelled aeromodels were stick-and-tissue. Then
plastics came into widespread use, and aeromodels swiftly evolved into
Ready-to-Fly (RTF) "kits" that are ubiquitous today. Do it yourself
balsa and tissue model airplanes are rarely seen, or flown, these
days. And aeromodelling no longer provides the hands-on attention to
aerodynamic detail--or flight characteristics--that we learned in the
40s and 50s. Alas.
In a similar way, model rockets and amateur rocketry have (mostly)
simplified experiments to the point anyone can assemble and fly an
Estes or Apogee rocket in less than an hour. Wow. It now seems out of
reach (for most) to formulate a 75-15-10 KN propellant in the garage,
much less properly ram or press the grain into a suitable paper tube.
I suppose we now have a few rocket engineering generalists,
well-versed in both liquids and solids, and many others highly focused
on technical processes totally over the heads of their (non-rocketeer)
friends and neighbors.
There's no point in this message, I suppose, yet I've felt compelled
to share the personal observation. FWIW, prolly zero.
Edward Jones