Sad: Rocket Camp Cancelled due to lack of interest

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

wfcook

Mayhem Rocketry, LLC
Joined
Nov 15, 2013
Messages
1,028
Reaction score
11
RANT: We got an email this morning telling us that our son's camp for next week - Blastoff 3-2-1 Rocket Camp - was cancelled due to insufficient enrollment. When I was a kid, a camp like this would have filled up in a couple of hours and had a waiting list as long as your arm.

I suppose rockets and science just aren't cool and fun any more. But I bet a twerking camp would fill up in minutes. </RANT>
 
Wow that is a real bummer! Did they do any advertising or go to schools to advertise? I ask because I am doing my first rocket class this weekend and I have a waiting list of over 10 people with 24 kids in the actual class. I teamed up with the library and they were able to buy all the supplies and food through a grant they had. This allowed me to offer the class for free. Maybe you can team up with the camp to help find solutions for next time. Oh, and I agree with science not being cool anymore in school, but I guess it's up to us to make it cool for them :wink:
 
That is sad. I went to the Stark County 4 H rocket launch and one kid showed up... I talked to the lady that runs it and I may be taking it over as long as the higher ups OK it. There was over 15 rockets on display but only one to fly (they don't want to damage there rocket for the State fare). I still have a bunch of parts to make Starlight Zippy kits so there will be rockets flying. It dosn't help when the 4H leader isn't into rockets. She started because of her son was interested and no one else was doing it. it is a sad day for this country when the next generation isn't interested in math and science and countrys like China and India are pumping out scientests and engeneers like mad.
Mr. Bob
Starlight Dude
Countyline Hobbies
Grovertown, IN
574-540-1123
[email protected]
 
Where is this??

My daughter usually goes to a day camp or two at "Space Center Houston" during the summer... Betty had some trouble registering her the other day though, and I think she needs to call to make sure it went through...

Some of them are fluff anyway, especially for the younger kids, but now that Keira is 9, she's starting to get into the more interesting stuff... Too bad my sister won't spring for my nephews to go... it'd do them good... Tristan is sharp and going into 6th grade, and Ian is Keira's age... there finishing VBS this morning in fact...

Later! OL JR :)
 
UROC had a rocket building session and then flying 2 days last week for children at Hill AFB in Utah. We had 14 kids show for the building and 11 for flying. Our club organizer thought that we might get more than the number of new kits that he ordered and so he had to use some of the older kits from last year. The age range was about 5 to 10. We had 4 adult club members along with the base staff helping during the build session and we needed everyone of them. Things went well. Some of the older kids were repeats from last year.
 
That is sad. I went to the Stark County 4 H rocket launch and one kid showed up... I talked to the lady that runs it and I may be taking it over as long as the higher ups OK it. There was over 15 rockets on display but only one to fly (they don't want to damage there rocket for the State fare). I still have a bunch of parts to make Starlight Zippy kits so there will be rockets flying. It dosn't help when the 4H leader isn't into rockets. She started because of her son was interested and no one else was doing it. it is a sad day for this country when the next generation isn't interested in math and science and countrys like China and India are pumping out scientests and engeneers like mad.
Mr. Bob
Starlight Dude
Countyline Hobbies
Grovertown, IN
574-540-1123
[email protected]

Quite true...

My SIL is the 4-H agent for Fulton County, Indiana, down at Rochester. I judged the 'aerospace' competition for her for a couple years (couldn't this year because we couldn't stay for the fair last week or the week before... we had to get back for my daughter's state 4-H dog show here in Texas and her state swim meet tryouts. Couple years back I put on a "presentation" about rocketry for the kids who were interested... only 3-4 showed up. Maybe a half dozen to a dozen actually enter model rocket kits in the competition. Of those, usually 2-3 get selected to go to the State Fair. They have a launch, and I ran it one year, and helped a couple others... Usually it's fairly well attended, and usually the kids that place lower fly (the State fair entries CAN fly, but it's highly recommended that they don't until after the State Fair). Some of the stuff I've seen go on in years past when I was there as a spectator didn't particularly impress me safety-wise, sad to say. Don't know who the guy was doing it back then, but he didn't seem particularly to be from a "model rocketry background". A little too "fast and loose" with safety IMHO... let a five-stager homebrew fly completely over the fairgrounds toward some woods and a grain elevator far to the east, and they had a rocket lawn-dart in the horse arena during a show-- that brought some flack, lemme tell ya... :)

Anyway, most of the kids seem to be the most interested in the "bottle rocket" (water rocket" competition. 4-H has some project sheets on making "water rockets" and launching them with compressed air out of old 2 liter pop bottles. My daughter did one for the 'Exploring 4-H' last year since she couldn't enter the competition herself, not being a resident... We did a "Darth Vader" bottle rocket. DSCF6264.jpg Some of the contest entries were really neat; the first year they have to use a given pattern for the nosecone and fins, but their second and subsequent years, they can do pretty much anything they want... I had one poor kid who Dad decided it'd be a good idea to make the nosecone out of a METAL SHEET from an old dryer duct, complete with pop rivets to hold it together, cut from the paper pattern traced onto the metal sheet. NO WAY was I letting a POINTED METAL NOSECONE fly-- almost disqualified it, but the Dad made a point that the project sheets "nowhere forbid the use of metal" and seeing as he was correct, I simply gave it last place... after all, poor judgment on the Dad's part cost the kid, but it was clear from the "workmanship" and the kid's age and limited knowledge or interest in the project that Dad did most or all the work anyway. I talked to my SIL afterward about "amending the project sheets" to forbid metal construction and make it clear that they need to be SAFE, especially since they just "impact" after flight or at best tumble... Some kids made winged rockets that had no chance of flying stably, and some incorporated model rocket parts for "upper stages" and rocket nosecones and stuff (an "Interceptor E" nosecone on one interesting one. Some were decorated like pigs or other stuff but made to fly, sorta like our oddrocs competitions in model rocketry... Judging was fun and the flights were fun too, for the most part...

My SIL asked me to help with a water rocket presentation over on the other side of the county this year, and I did... we used the fair's water rocket launcher and my little portable in-car air compressor (cig plug lighter compressor from Walmart) to launch water rockets that the local kids built at their library branch in their town... They had a BLAST... I wasn't entirely sure that the little dinky walmart air compressor ("Tire-Slime" brand $20 emergency compressor/light) would work, since they usually either run an air line from a semi-truck or bring a mobile tire service compressor out for the 4-H club launch at the fair, but it worked beautifully... it could compress a pop bottle half full of water up to 90 PSI in about 45 seconds or so, and launch at 60 PSI in about 30 seconds.... worked great! We got one pop bottle up to 135 PSI in one test after most kids had left... probably had about 30 kids show up and launch their rockets; some stuck around "afterwards" and kept retrieving anything still remotely intact and refilling them for launch... I wanted to see where the limit was for pressurizing a pop bottle water rocket, but the best I could do with the little dinky compressor was about 135 PSI and it was still intact, and in fact launched to probably 200-300 feet and landed in the neighbor's back yard...

Later! OL JR :)
 
Last edited:
That sucks. I don't think my town even has a rocketry camp, although they have tons of other camps.
 
Sometimes things that fail because of lackluster participation are not due to "lack of interest" but are due to "poor promotion." Did they do anything to get the word out? Around here parents are always scrambling at the last minute to find things for their kids to do after everything fills up.
 
Quite imaginative! I like it!

Thanks... We made a posterboard tube to surround the soda bottle, cut a paper towel tube in half lengthwise for the arms, cut the fins from cardboard and then covered it all with black duct tape to make Darth's suit. We were gonna add inverted paper cone glove gauntlets and fists of duct tape covered tin foil balls, but ran out of time. The helmet was made from an oversize paper cone, with a ball of tin foil covered with duct tape for the rounded "top" of the helmet, then cut out in the classic Vader helmet style for the face. The fins served as Vader's "boots" in front, and the tips of his "cape" in the back. The whole thing got the black duct tape treatment, and then Keira used a silver sharpie to color on the suit and face details.

Using a posterboard "tube" to contain the pop bottle gives a lot better fin mounting and can make the body longer (just as we use a motor mount in our model rockets) and the rest is just imagination...

She flew the thing nearly to death... the spillage from filling the bottle halfway and the water spray at liftoff and at "burnout" kinda played heck with his paper parts, as did the repeated impacts to the top of his helmet at landing (impact, since they have no recovery devices). She literally flew the thing nearly into the ground. We kept him, and let him dry out, but his helmet is pretty much toast...

I helped her a lot with it, because I wanted to demonstrate to the kids that they can do a lot more imaginative things with the bottle rocket competition than just putting googley eyes on the front of the bottle, a faux pig snout, coating the thing with pink duct tape, and a little twisted pipe cleaner tail to make "pig rockets" and stuff like that...

Surprising how well the things fly too, actually...

Later! OL JR :)

PS. Keira says "thank you!"... :)
 
Personally I am of the opinion that many hobbies participation numbers are in serious decline. The older participants are dying off or just getting to old to actively participate and there are fewer and fewer young people entering these hobbies.

Model rocketry and model railroading are the two I am most familiar with and out here in Western Oklahoma where I now live there is virtually zero involvement in either of those hobbies and there are no hobby shops anymore to support/encourage people if there were.

Many a year ago when I spent my youthful summers back here visiting family I would often hook up with other kids and fly rockets or play with their trains and I would always prowl the many small hobby shops in all the small towns where the various family members lived.

Gone! Gone! Gone! All of them;and they were gone long before the internet came along to kill them.

And gone with them? All the kids getting involved with what we as kids thought of as a &#8220;Hobby&#8221;.
 
Personally I am of the opinion that many hobbies participation numbers are in serious decline. The older participants are dying off or just getting to old to actively participate and there are fewer and fewer young people entering these hobbies.

Model rocketry and model railroading are the two I am most familiar with and out here in Western Oklahoma where I now live there is virtually zero involvement in either of those hobbies and there are no hobby shops anymore to support/encourage people if there were.

Many a year ago when I spent my youthful summers back here visiting family I would often hook up with other kids and fly rockets or play with their trains and I would always prowl the many small hobby shops in all the small towns where the various family members lived.

Gone! Gone! Gone! All of them;and they were gone long before the internet came along to kill them.

And gone with them? All the kids getting involved with what we as kids thought of as a &#8220;Hobby&#8221;.

Agreed. Agreed. I see some of the same things happening in some church organizations, too. I think young people starting out in life have either no interest in hobbies or are too involved in making a living that they are too tired to purse anything else.
 
Agreed. Agreed. I see some of the same things happening in some church organizations, too. I think young people starting out in life have either no interest in hobbies or are too involved in making a living that they are too tired to purse anything else.

Funny enough, I come from another hobby (Magic: the gathering,) and the last few years numbers have been skyrocketing. Major tournies there are capping out on attendance (Just had a 4.5K event a year ago, and another one hit 4K+ back around April or so.) I think the decline we are seeing is not so much younger people not wanting to take up a hobby, as much as what hobbies people want to take up.
 
Funny enough, I come from another hobby (Magic: the gathering,) and the last few years numbers have been skyrocketing. Major tournies there are capping out on attendance (Just had a 4.5K event a year ago, and another one hit 4K+ back around April or so.) I think the decline we are seeing is not so much younger people not wanting to take up a hobby, as much as what hobbies people want to take up.

Could be. Perhaps, something that involves the social media or some sort of social aspect like fantasy and magic. Comic-cons seem to be the rage now. It seems some city nationally is hosting a comic-con almost every month.
 
Personally I am of the opinion that many hobbies participation numbers are in serious decline. The older participants are dying off or just getting to old to actively participate and there are fewer and fewer young people entering these hobbies.

Model rocketry and model railroading are the two I am most familiar with and out here in Western Oklahoma where I now live there is virtually zero involvement in either of those hobbies and there are no hobby shops anymore to support/encourage people if there were.

Many a year ago when I spent my youthful summers back here visiting family I would often hook up with other kids and fly rockets or play with their trains and I would always prowl the many small hobby shops in all the small towns where the various family members lived.

Gone! Gone! Gone! All of them;and they were gone long before the internet came along to kill them.

And gone with them? All the kids getting involved with what we as kids thought of as a &#8220;Hobby&#8221;.

True... but the internet didn't "kill" them... in fact, the internet is probably their best chance for life... it allows a wider variety and larger number of people to be exposed to rocketry and railroading and other hobbies... plus it's a vital area of commerce for both buying and selling rocketry and railroading supplies, products, and materials. Could you imagine having to do EVERYTHING by MAIL ORDER the way it was back in the 70's and early 80's, back when I was a kid?? I mean, we managed back then, because we didn't know any better, and there was no other way. Remember "please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery"?? Can you imagine ANYBODY thinking that's acceptable NOW?? I mean, heck, if I don't get an Amazon order in 3-4 DAYS I'm worried something went wrong. Heck even an email order from Estes usually arrives within a week. Semroc, well, heck, they seemed to have some capability to time warp-- you'd receive notification in your email that your order had been received and was being processed virtually by the time you hit "submit order" and closed the window... and by the time you read the email notification your order was being processed and closed the email, you'd have the "order shipped" notification in your inbox... The box would usually be on your porch waiting for you within 2 days... Never seen anything like it! (and sadly probably won't again).

No, what is killing hobbies is that folks don't have any PATIENCE anymore... nobody wants to take the time to actually construct anything or build anything, and not many want to go out in the heat, bugs, weeds, etc. to fly it... Most folks live in McMansions now, but nobody's got room for anything else in the house, what with a big flatscreen in every room and a bunch of electronics hooked up, and all the other stuff everybody fills their houses with (us included). Who's got room for a model railroad layout taking up massive amounts of space?? Who's got the patience to build a big layout and landscape it and do track maintenance and all the other stuff that goes along with it??

Add to it, the fact that it's a different generation. The guys who grew up with steam power, or watching their Dad's build their railroad layouts in the basement or whatever and tinkering with steam model locomotives and stuff, well, they're OUR age or older! (like my BIL who's 54, 11 years older than I... and he was one of the "kids watching his Dad the steamfan tinker with model RR stuff") His kids, (who are grown) and my kid (who's 9) don't have a clue... They've never seen a steam train outside of an amusement park, scenic railway, history channel documentary, steamfan video, museum, or model railroad layout. They don't have the "attachment" to it like the older generation did. They don't get excited about trains like the older generation did, back when 1) there were a LOT more trains and 2) trains were a big deal. It's basically the same with rockets... kids nowdays don't have much experience with it... Shuttle was "old hat" and "ho-hum" and just not a big deal to them. The wonder of going to the Moon, the fascination with the technology that made Saturn work and be such an elegant solution to the problems faced just doesn't register with them. My daughter is into it, because she's immersed in it, because I'm nuts about it and share it with her... but her peers, to them it's just something on TV, ho-hum or ancient history...

Nowdays kids have Pokémon and Hamsterball and immersive video games and yes, computer chatting, facebook, twitter, music videos, CD's, DVD's, 1000 cable/satellite channels of TV (most of it inane stupidity) and a thousand other things vying for their attention, and they rate MOST of it as MUCH more important to their daily lives than a HOBBY...

It's like that monologue by Tim Wilson... "Remember when we were kids... we had something called "going outside and PLAY"... There was this little kid who lived across the road or down the street, and he'd come over to your house and knock on the door, and you'd ask your Mom if you could go outside and play... And basically you'd hop on your bike and ride off somewhere or walk through the woods and pick up a stick and play with it or something-- toss rocks in the stream or something. Sometimes you'd pull a ball and bat out and play ball or kick a ball around or toss the football... Then we'd have something called "eating supper together"... You're Mom would call you into the house by shouting out the back door "it's time for SUPPER!" and you'd come in and wash up and sit at the table, and everybody would sit down and eat and actually talk to each other... most of the time your little friend would stay and eat with you, but sometimes you'd ask to go over to his house if his momma was making something you liked better... Sometime's you'd do something you weren't supposed to do and get into trouble, and then we had a thing we called an @$$-whoopin'... Yer Daddy would take his belt off and whip your @$$ with it and you'd cry, and you didn't do that stupid sh!t anymore... "

I have to laugh... my nephews are SO addicted to their little Gameboys or SOS's or whatever they're called that they're just MISERABLE if they have to go an hour without them... Heck even my daughter, who we've trained to do little craft projects, or read a book, or occasionally play a Roblox or other "educational" type computer game, sometimes gripes about being "bored". I've trained her not to whine to me about being "bored", because I WILL find something for her to do-- clean her room, pick up clothes, pick up around the house, clean out the car, clean up around her dog's house, etc... It's funny because we were recently visiting my wife's best friend from college up at Nashville, and her boy (who's a couple months older than my daughter) started whining at some point about being "bored" and I was like "Oh, I can fix that!" and Keira told him right off, "Oh, don't say that! Find something to do, or he'll find something for you to do you won't like!" LOL:) After convincing him that if he remained "bored" I'd make him wash my car, he shut up...

Amazing what kids can do when you properly motivate them... LOL:)

The thing is, hobbies COST a lot more than they used to... for the most part, anyway. For instance, when I was in middle school and got started with rocketry, a good starter set with EVERYTHING you needed to start was like $15, including some motors! Nowdays you can't hardly touch one for less than about $40. (Granted that $15 bucks in 1985 was probably about the same or more than the $40 is now, but you get the point). I used to mow my grandmother's lawn for $6 per mowing... so I could buy a starter kit after mowing the yard three times... I could usually buy a pretty good rocket kit every time I mowed the yard, or a couple packs of motors... I used to pick up 18mm BP rocket motors for about $3 and some change a pack. "D" motors were like $4 a pack. Now you're lucky if you can find them for less than $15 a pack. 18mm's are a little cheaper than that of course. Kit's are more expensive yet... most are anywhere from $20-30 bucks and up, for anything of decent size and 'coolness factor'... (ie NOT E2X, RTF junk, and those aren't MUCH cheaper... and most "really cool" kits are more expensive yet.

I got into model railroading again (who didn't do a little model railroading as a kid in the 70's??) right after I got married, because my BIL was into it and I ended up working in the "train building" (model railroad club) for 4H at the county fair in Indiana during the summer... enjoyed it and got into it again... this was back around 2001-02-03, and I bought some model railroad cars and stuff that I was fascinated with-- and those things were EXPENSIVE! Finding stuff on clearance and a good railroad car would STILL run you somewhere between $10-20 bucks! Some were around $40 for a SINGLE RR car alone! I bought a set of 5 of those "articulated cars" (the cargo container box movers, with the single set of wheels (truck) between the ends of two adjacent cars, permanently attached to each other over the truck bolster pivot) and that set was like $50 bucks or so... a set of six Bethgon coalporters was like $60 bucks. I'd hate to think what they'd cost now over ten years later! Locos were REALLY expensive... upwards of $60 bucks for a little locomotive or cheapy, upwards of $70-100 or more for better/bigger ones... Heck they wanted over $7 a piece for hollow plastic "conex" boxes to put in the articulated cars, so I built my own... Railroading USED to be about as cheap of a hobby as you could get (if you had the dedicated space for it).

When I was a teenager, I wanted to fly RC planes, but back then, you couldn't TOUCH an RC setup for less than about $400 bucks... first you had to get a plane kit (and build it, which could take a few weeks/months and cost around $100 bucks with all the supplies). Then you needed an engine and props, that would be around another $100... then you'd need the radio, which was easily $100... and then servos and horns and rods and servo wiring, and fuel, batteries, incidentals, which was easily another $100... I never had the money to even THINK about it. NOW you can go buy a foamy park flyer ARF/RTF with all the gear installed, ready to go, with electric motors (no messy fuel to mix, no glow plugs, no fiddling with troublesome IC engines) and including the radio for less than $100 bucks. You can get into RC monster trucks, stadium trucks, race cars, etc., all with interchangeable parts and "hop ups" available, with electric motors (no fiddling with the troublesome IC engines) for a couple hundred or so... you can run for hours for a few pennies in electricity to charge the batteries, and maybe $20-40 bucks apiece for extra packs (depending on the batteries).

Certainly cheaper than spending $15 bucks for a three pack of "D" motors with a combined flight time of maybe 3 minutes total in a streamlined single-motor rocket... with most of that time being under parachute...

Plus, how did you find out about rocketry?? I learned about rockets from "Boys Life" magazine, back when I was a cub scout... then I found another kid in school interested in rockets and he showed me his Estes and old Centuri catalog... (right before Centuri went away). How many kids today read a magazine?? When they DO read a magazine (in school, or comic books, or whatever) what is the advertising for?? More comic books and VIDEO GAMES, for the most part, from what I've seen... Plus, most kids do what their friends are doing-- playing on the cell phone, playing video games, chatting or tweeting or facebooking or whatever, etc... only the "nerds" and "weird kids" do hobbies and stuff... it requires skills and work and practice and materials... how can you ever get "Tomb Zombies Doomed to Grand Theft Donkey Kong XXIV" if you're blowing all your parent's money on yellow wood glue and carpenter's wood filler??

That's just how it is... times change I guess...

Later! OL JR :)
 
Could be. Perhaps, something that involves the social media or some sort of social aspect like fantasy and magic. Comic-cons seem to be the rage now. It seems some city nationally is hosting a comic-con almost every month.

Oh I have no doubt that this is part of the reason. Right now being geek is in. Not so much rocketry, but the stuff they show on BBT like board games and D&D and MTG. This is the stuff that only 20-25 years ago we were getting Chick Tracts for and now it is considered cool. So that alone adds to the draw of those hobbies.

Plus as luke has said, it is cheaper to get into D&D (20 buclks for the core rules, and everyone contributes to the other books,) and MTG (12 bucks gets you a full deck you can use with friends.) Whereas rocketry has shot up in price. The same thing is being seen in wargaming as well. The cost of models for wargaming only keeps getting more expensive. As an example, there is a model on one of the wargames I used to play that was $20 for three, now it is $30 for just one.
 
While hobby shops are increasingly rare, Estes has GREAT distribution in discount stores. Wal-Mart, some Target stores, craft stores like Micheal's. In the Pacific NW, Fred Meyer and Bi-Mart have 'em.

Kids in general (at least, middle class kids) are WAY over-scheduled, with lots of activities and home work.

One thing rocketry has now that it didn't have in its "space race" golden age is serious competition from other high-tech persuits. I have at least two co-workers whose kids are kept WAY busy with the "First Robotics" robotics competition. It is heavily sponsored, and many tech firms provide employee mentors. The closest analogue is TARC, and as impressive as it is it doesn't seem to have the glamour or exposure of First Robotics. (The regional matches were held in Portland's Rose coliseum!)
 
All of the Scout groups in our area have excellent participation when they do model rocket launches, which tends to be an annual affair rather than something that's done on an ongoing basis. There are a lot of them around So Cal, though, so the local NAR chapter (SCRA, which flys out of Santa Fe Dam twice a month... it's the ONLY approved model rocket facililty in So Cal outside of Lucerne Valley) has Scout groups at virtually every launch. ROC has an annual meet in October especially for kids, and there are hundreds of them there every year. I think there are plenty of kids out there that are predisposed to the hobby, the challenge is getting them exposed to it. You have to get them hooked in grade school, once they're in Middle School rockets are just too nerdy...

I agree that kids nowadays don't have the patience that they used to, if you look at "building" toys most of them aren't the same as they used to be. Lego sets only make one particular model, instead of being a box of rectangular bricks requiring imagination to make something resembling your intended model. Erector sets are virtually extinct. Our instant-information Internet-driven society has a tendency to stifle imagination, since the "facts" are available with just a click on Google or Wikipedia... if that's how something is done, why bother figuring it out yourself, since somebody else already did the work for you?
 
While hobby shops are increasingly rare, Estes has GREAT distribution in discount stores. Wal-Mart, some Target stores, craft stores like Micheal's. In the Pacific NW, Fred Meyer and Bi-Mart have 'em.

Kids in general (at least, middle class kids) are WAY over-scheduled, with lots of activities and home work.

One thing rocketry has now that it didn't have in its "space race" golden age is serious competition from other high-tech persuits. I have at least two co-workers whose kids are kept WAY busy with the "First Robotics" robotics competition. It is heavily sponsored, and many tech firms provide employee mentors. The closest analogue is TARC, and as impressive as it is it doesn't seem to have the glamour or exposure of First Robotics. (The regional matches were held in Portland's Rose coliseum!)

If you say so; I live in Oklahoma and from what I&#8217;ve seen here there is zero representation by Estes in either Wal-Mart or Target, or Michel&#8217;s and even Hobby Lobby offers little to nothing in rocketry or model railroading for that matter.

And it wasn&#8217;t any different when I lived in California though I suppose that might have changed in the past 14 years.

The internet definitely makes it great for those of us ALREADY involved in some hobby or another but I wonder whether it entices kids to get involved in the first place.
 
Rocket camp was not an option as a child. We made our own.

This is true, but I think it's a wonderful thing that kids today have more options... more opportunities, than we did.

Isn't that what parents are supposed to do for their kids?? Give them more opportunities than they had??

Later! OL JR :)
 
I want to tack onto luke strawwalker's long missive by adding that feminism has contributed more to the destruction of outdoor play than anything. In the 1960s, moms stayed home with the kids; and yes, they played outside, and mom made dinner, and the family ate together.

Then in the 1970s, feminisim began, and women started demanding that they work outside the house. So in many households, there was no parent at home, and thus were born latchkey kids. And since the kids stuck at home after school needed something to do inside, the parents bought them all kinds of gadgets and things to keep them occupied.

By the 1980s, society had adapted to the idea of two-income households, so that started to become the norm. Now, the women who actually wanted to stay home with the kids couldn't, because with inflation, families could no longer make ends meet with one income.

And today, everyone works outside the home. Kids are raised by their school teachers, day care providers, and after care providers. When they are old enough to stay home by themselves, they are inside locked houses with the TV, game console, ipod, or some other thing on, so that they aren't bored out of their minds.

And I don't think there is any way back.
 
Got to invite the neighborhood kids out for a good ol launch every now and then. However, I see how hard it is to get them excited. Watching the rockets is instant gratification but I can't get my 14 year old nephew to sit down long enough to actually build a kit - and he has several.


Sent from my iPhone using Rocketry Forum
 
Let me add a few to the list of hobbies that used to be "big" back in the day but now are "gone" by comparison:

Balsa/tissue flying model airplanes---rubber band or Cox engines, free flight or control-line

Plastic model cars, boats, planes

Slot cars---1/24th scale, 1/32nd, HO, and all the rest

TV, radio, and stereo kits like Heath

Hot rods (the home-built kind, not the store-bought ones)

HAM radio operators

Scale model ship building, with or without bottles

Chemistry sets for kids home use, complete with chemicals that would put you on the homeland security list these days

Microscope sets for kids home use, with slides and supplies for specimen preparation

Vacu-form

Rock and mineral collecting

Stamp collecting

Coin collecting

Baseball card collecting

Traditional archery (not the modern mechanical-nightmare kind)

Camping---the kind where you packed it all in, slept in a tent (not a mobile home)

Enough of that. I agree that most kids are spoiled from the barrage of get-it-now, play-with-it-now toys, hobbies, videos, electronic games, etc. It is a national epidemic, I believe that people in general are getting LESS intelligent as our culture marches on. I also believe that the disappearing hobby problem is aggravated by the fact that most parents today don't know how or what to do with any of these hobbies or crafts, so they certainly cannot teach them to kids. If anything, the internet has saved these hobbies by making it easier for the remaining enthusiasts to connect and share.

But I still don't know what to do about the little brats loose out there who not only do not build anything, but seem to think it is funny to chase down your hand-built model rocket or model airplane and stomp it to pieces. It is awful darn tempting to bring along something from one of my other hobbies, like a 9mm.
 
Last edited:
But I still don't know what to do about the little brats loose out there who not only do not build anything, but seem to think it is funny to chase down your hand-built model rocket or model airplane and stomp it to pieces. It is awful darn tempting to bring along something from one of my other hobbies, like a 9mm.

Maybe you need to find better brats. I was born-again last year (after a 20 year absence). My first launch was by my Mother's as she has space and I live in the middle of Chicago. My nieces (8 and 4 at the time) just happened to be there so I dragged them to the field. They had no idea what to expect. IIRC the motor was just a B and with that first whoosh, they were literally jumping with excitement. Without any prompting, the older ran out to retrieve the rocket and returned shouting, "Again!"

We've launched a handful of times since then. The only problem is I don't get to press the launch button anymore.
 
Maybe you need to find better brats. I was born-again last year (after a 20 year absence). My first launch was by my Mother's as she has space and I live in the middle of Chicago. My nieces (8 and 4 at the time) just happened to be there so I dragged them to the field. They had no idea what to expect. IIRC the motor was just a B and with that first whoosh, they were literally jumping with excitement. Without any prompting, the older ran out to retrieve the rocket and returned shouting, "Again!"

We've launched a handful of times since then. The only problem is I don't get to press the launch button anymore.

Ditto for my kids. They absolutely love to press the button, and they find club launches pretty boring. They are good retrievers, though.
 
Let me add a few to the list of hobbies that used to be "big" back in the day but now are "gone" by comparison:

Balsa/tissue flying model airplanes---rubber band or Cox engines, free flight or control-line

Plastic model cars, boats, planes

Slot cars---1/24th scale, 1/32nd, HO, and all the rest

TV, radio, and stereo kits like Heath

Hot rods (the home-built kind, not the store-bought ones)

HAM radio operators

Scale model ship building, with or without bottles

Chemistry sets for kids home use, complete with chemicals that would put you on the homeland security list these days

Microscope sets for kids home use, with slides and supplies for specimen preparation

Vacu-form

Rock and mineral collecting

Stamp collecting

Coin collecting

Baseball card collecting

Traditional archery (not the modern mechanical-nightmare kind)

Camping---the kind where you packed it all in, slept in a tent (not a mobile home)

Enough of that. I agree that most kids are spoiled from the barrage of get-it-now, play-with-it-now toys, hobbies, videos, electronic games, etc. It is a national epidemic, I believe that people in general are getting LESS intelligent as our culture marches on. I also believe that the disappearing hobby problem is aggravated by the fact that most parents today don't know how or what to do with any of these hobbies or crafts, so they certainly cannot teach them to kids. If anything, the internet has saved these hobbies by making it easier for the remaining enthusiasts to connect and share.

But I still don't know what to do about the little brats loose out there who not only do not build anything, but seem to think it is funny to chase down your hand-built model rocket or model airplane and stomp it to pieces. It is awful darn tempting to bring along something from one of my other hobbies, like a 9mm.

Well, I wouldn't agree with most of your "gone" list... they might not be as "prevalent" today as in years gone by, but they certainly still exist... and what hobby ISN'T smaller today than in years past (with the obvious exception of RC, which has benefitted ENORMOUSLY from the leaps in microelectronics technology, battery technology, new materials (like foams and carbon fiber), etc.

My 9 year old is in 4-H archery... she shoots every Thursday night from 7:30 to 9 or 9:30... She started out on regular old recurve bows, and she's done really well and likes it, so we bought her a compound bow and had it fitted to her... (draw force, draw length, arrow length)... she's now shooting about twice as good as she did before just because of having better equipment. (not sure if that's the "mechanical nightmare" you're talking about or not... but it's like everything else-- there's no substitute for skill, but good equipment allows you to make the most of the skills you have... an idiot will get poor results out of even the best equipment, but a skilled person will be even better with good equipment).

There's plenty of philatelists still around... might not be as 'widespread' as it used to be, but there's still DEFINITELY a "market" for it.

Chemistry sets, as you mentioned, are harder to come by... victim of the 'nanny state' and the general dumbing down of society... Kids still have an interest though... when my daughter was 2-3, of the coolest things in the universe to her was when we ate at a local café in Shiner, which had clad their tables in sheet copper. The copper, of course, had patina and turned a dark cocoa brown, but folks would spill drops of lemon or hot sauce on it, which would eat through the patina and bring out the bright reddish copper color beneath... I would take lemon and write my initials on the table in lemon juice, and over the course of about a half minute it would "develop" as the lemon juice reacted with the copper, revealing my initials in bright shiny copper... she would draw pictures with the lemon...

Geology and stuff is still a hobby for some, though probably not as much interest as there was in years past... I teach my daughter about different forms of rock and stratigraphy when we go anywhere hilly enough to have rock outcrops, like at Garner State Park west of San Antonio... We also look at different rock types in the river stones and discuss them. Keira, from the time she was old enough to walk, would commonly pick up tiny bits of gravel and stone in every parking lot we stopped at that was interesting to her or caught her eye... we probably have about 40 pounds of rock and stone around here because of it, and buckets of seashells...

One thing that's killing hobbies is the expense... I just got back from the LHS, in fact, after Keira's swimming lesson today... went down to Sugarland (20-25 miles or so) to get some Plastruct or Evergreen styrene parts for a rocket build, and some fine-line detailing tape, and see what else they had around that's new. Nothing in the detailing tapes was close to what I needed, and what they did have was between $5-7 a roll. I looked at their plastruct display, and was going to pick up a few packages just to have on hand, although they didn't have exactly the stuff I needed, and turns out they wanted nearly $5 a package for maybe 5-6 pieces of plastic, maybe 10 cents worth of product... and the thing is, they didn't have what I needed ANYWAY, and I couldn't afford to 'stock up" on stuff I *might* use "someday", not at $5 per package! MOST "hobbies" are that way now. The other thing is, with most kids living in "McMansions" inside gated, "planned communities" that are cookie-cuttered into the landscape in a carefully controlled fashion, it's hard for them to enjoy outdoor hobbies, especially when there's no open space or its on the other side of high fences and stuff... For a lot of things, it's like "why blow big money on (whatever) hobby, when I can put that money toward a PlayMachine XIV or whatever and some of the coolest shoot-em-up games"??

Just different times I guess... depends on the folks, though... and you're right... a lot of parents don't do hobbies, so they don't teach their kids hobbies. Keira has been doing little craft projects ever since she was old enough to hold crayons... Our house looks like some sort of weird modern-art gallery... Heck a few weeks ago when school let out, I was watching a lot of history channel stuff on the Third Reich and the Nazis... Keira asked me why people joined the Nazis, so I told her "because everything else was outlawed, basically." She thought about a bit and said, "those people needed a nice alternative to the Nazis"... next thing I know, she's putting up "N.I.C.E.E. Party Headquarters" signs up around the house... "What's this?" I asked... She told me, "well, the Nazis were bad, people needed an alternative, so they should have started a NICEE party to come out against the Nazis..."

Always thinking... :) That's my girl...

Problem is, nowdays, for most people, "thinking" goes no deeper than whatever pop culture garbage is on TV, rap music or other such degenerate waste, murderous video games, or other such nonsense and trash... We don't have it... don't want it, never have, never will... Most parents nowdays are too tied up in their own fun and good timing to even raise their kids, let alone do anything recreational or "play" with them in an educational way...

Later! OL JR :)
 
RANT: We got an email this morning telling us that our son's camp for next week - Blastoff 3-2-1 Rocket Camp - was cancelled due to insufficient enrollment. When I was a kid, a camp like this would have filled up in a couple of hours and had a waiting list as long as your arm.

I suppose rockets and science just aren't cool and fun any more. But I bet a twerking camp would fill up in minutes. </RANT>

Right on with your rant sir!


Launching rockets (or missiles in my case) is so easy a chimp could do it. Read a step, do a step, eat a banana.

Sent from my iPad Air using Rocketry Forum.
 
Back
Top