I underlined a sentence in John Coker’s post that really stood out. I feel like this is something that this “normal progress” is happening less recently. I feel like more people are trying to leapfrog past those experience building steps in an effort to achieve higher altitudes and greater velocities. I’d like to know if others are seeing the same thing that I am.
My general sense from hanging out here (since 2002-ish) is that there have always been newbies who fit that mold.
Neah, you are just might be getting cranky with age....
:lol:
The
first and only question my kids asked when I gave them complete freedom to order their own rockets was: "which one goes the highest?"
And you know what - I remember sorting my rocket preferences by exactly the same criteria 30+odd years ago.
I bet so did
YOU, and most everyone else here, if you think back to your younger days!
Geee, lets go "low and slow" - that was NOT how any of us got excited about this hobby.
We all wanted to go high, and fast!
The only major difference
now is that it's WAY easier and cheaper to go crazy high and stupid fast today, then it was decades ago.
Frankly, I'm super happy that my eight year old has soldered together her very own GPS transmitter/receiver, and built her first mid-power FG model. I exited the hobby as a teenager long before either GPS or FG components became affordable and readily available.
Kids are having so much more fun these days then we did.
Good for them!
My worry is whether we see more of it now. When you and I started it took a greater investment in time and effort. We didn’t have the vast assortment of G12 airfare or G10 fins that we have now. People glassed cardboard or phenolic tubes and plywood fins.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not looking for a return to the “good old days” that we remember more rosy than they really were. I don’t want to have to jump into a pool with a glassed body tube to soften the cardboard enough to remove. I like the composite materials that are available; I just worry that it has become too formulaic to achieve the three levels of certification, then fly as high as possible at BALLS, declare triumph, and move on to the next hobby. And maybe that doesn’t truly hurt anything.
Hurts nothing,
other than the wallets.
:surprised:
Which is all music to the ears of the vendors, of which there are easily 10x of what I remember from the last time around (largely due to the online storefronts).
a
P.S.: You want non-formulaic certs? Consider adding the following:
Level 4 cert: hit Karman line.
Level 5 cert: enter Earth's orbit, and return with full recovery.
Level 6 cert: enter Mars's orbit, and return with full recovery. Present model to cert team for inspection after flight.