Security concerns keep model rockets earthbound
By John M. McGuire St. Louis Post Dispatch
03/30/2003

Will model rockets be grounded?

Homeland Security's new regulations classify the fuel - ammonium perchlorate composite propellant - as an explosive material. The government agency imposes new restrictions on shipping and handling model rocket motors.

Meanwhile, a Feb. 11, 2000, suit filed by the National Association of Rocketry in Altoona, Wis., and the Tripoli Rocketry Association, based in Orem, Utah, is pending against the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives in federal court in Washington. The suit claims that the bureau has no legal authority to regulate model rocket motors.

The association contends that these APCP-fueled motors have been used safely for decades and already are heavily regulated by other federal agencies.

Nonetheless, the future of big model rocketry is cloudy.

"I think it would be seriously shortsighted to ground the high-power rocketry hobby," said Charles D. Walker, the first civilian astronaut from a private company. Walker works at the Boeing office in Arlington, Va., after spending years here with the McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co. As a boy in Bedford, Ind., he formed a model-rocket club that had capsules capable of carrying insects and a toad. At McDonnell Douglas, he made three shuttle flights in 15 months.

"It would be more logical, in the same vein, to prohibit ownership, rental and operation of all panel trucks," Walker said. "Grounding the high-power hobby wouldn't be addressing a realistic threat or even seriously contributing to our domestic security."

John Buckley, local supervisor of the Team America model rocket organization, is also uncertain about what will happen.

"High power is what draws many of the adults who are involved today and keeps them interested," he said. "And it's the adults who organize the educational activities like Team America. It would be a shame for this type of activity to be lost."

- John McGuire