This topic shows up here on occasion as it does on the model railroad forums.
There may be some way to wade through all the data accumulated by various agencies but again; maybe not.
Which example demonstrates a “Healthier” state of a hobby?
A: 100,000 participants each spending $100 a year for a total of $10,000,000 a year.
B: 10,000 participants each spending $2,000 a year for a total of $20,000,000 a year.
C: 5,000 participants each spending $10,000 a year for a total of $50,000,000 a year.
I’m pretty sure that in sheer number of participants model railroading is in decline, in fact I personally think it is in serious decline, but in dollars spent it might not be too far off what it was 10 or 15 years ago.
Rocketry is probably in much the same situation.
Declining numbers but increasing dollars spent by those who remain.
When both of those factors go into decline then the end will come swiftly as company after company begins chasing after a greater share of a shrinking market.
With both rocketry and model railroads a hobbyist needs three things to actively participate.
1: Time
2: Money
3: Room
Now the first one “Time” we have a constant 24 hours a day and you can’t spend ALL of them on your hobby. With trains your time is spent building and operating your layout. You don’t, by and large; have to spend time traveling in order to participate.
With rocketry travel is often mandatory especially if you fly mid and high power rockets. Heck even many of my BP two stage rockets fly higher than I can get away with at my town’s Bigopenparkthingey.
So with rocketry you have to spend time, sometimes a lot of it, just getting to where you can participate.
Now obviously you have to have money to participate in MR or rocketry and in both cases the extent to which you involve yourself in either hobby pretty much determines how much you spend.
But then we get to that “Travel” item which is so much a necessity for mid and HP rockets. Now money is being spent just for the opportunity to participate. It doesn’t buy you a new rocket or motor or anything else of a tangible/durable nature.
Finely we get to room. With Trains “Room” means exactly that; a space wherein you can build your layout.
With Rocketry “Room” gets a little bit more complex. Yes you need somewhere to build and store your rockets but you also need “Roooooooooooooooooom” to fly them (See Travel Above) and that room can go away for a whole host of reasons that have nothing to do with you and yours.
My point in this long winded diatribe is this; time, money and room are in ever decreasing amounts with an ever growing percentage of the population and those declines hit rocketry far more severely than they do model trains.
Now if model railroading is in decline and I think it is; then the same factors that are leading to this decline are affecting rocketry as well. And IMO, even more so.
Or I could be full of crap.
Actually there is in fact a forth factor you need; health and the less I say about that the better.
