WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ANTI-DRAGRACE SENTIMENT???

shop deals on amazon
eggtimer rocketry
madcow rocketry
Wildman Rocketry
The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
burkefj said:
I'm late to the discussion as well, from my point, I'm more concerned with anomolous flight/recovery issues, if you have multiple rockets launched, your probability of a recovery problem in at least one of them is higher, that's just probability, trying to call a heads up when a structural failure/ballistic recovery happens and being able to find/see where the problem is with multiple things in the air is much harder, and thus less safe. It's hard enough to get people to pay attention to a single heads up warning at a launch, let alone with multiple things going on.

Frank
Click to expand...

Thanks Frank!
 
Ted Cochran said:
I'm way late to the discussion, and I'll apologize in advance for not quoting all the folks who have inspired the following thread. I just want to provide some observations as someone who was on the NFPA committee at the time.

TL;DR: Code making is public. If you don't like the outcome, get involved. The drag race rules were derived from empirical evidence.

NFPA does codes through a consensus process. Periodically the code is reviewed and revised in a four stage, public process. Literally everyone can contribute suggestions, these are adopted or not by the committee, published for public comment, reviewed and modified (or not) again, and then published for final adjudication before being adopted. The Pyrotechnics committee includes mostly Fireworks industry experts, manufacturers, users, and regulators, with a smattering of rocketry folks. The two groups typically respect each other's subcommittee recommendations if they are not controversial. The rocketry members are reps from NAR, TRA, two Special Experts, four manufacturers, and some law enforcement folks with crossover interests. All the commenting and reviewing is open, internet-hosted, and participation by interested parties is welcome. If you care, get involved.

IIRC the drag race rules adopted in the process culminating in the 2013 Code revisions to both 1122 and 1127 (and both organizations' safety code revisions thereafter) were consensus rules adopted with constructive discussion and little dissent.

The motivation included two separate sources. For Low Power, there were the increasingly huge Boy Scout mass launch record attempts, which evolved into filling the infield of a football stadium with 1000s of rockets and launching them with crowds in the bleachers cheering them, and subsequent posting of Youtube videos of rockets, some under chute and sometimes not, raining down on whoever was upwind or downwind.

For HPR, it was Youtube videos of HPR drag races with various unseen anomalous recoveries in which potential harmful events were easily observed and the outcome not easily avoided other than by the luck of where people were standing or cars were parked.

Fireworks folks have to do math before a public display to show that the likelihood of duds hitting people is very small; we had no such requirement earlier since we had mostly been tracking individual objects in daylight and the feeling had been that observant people could get out of the way. Now there was hard evidence that even observant people were being put at risk by these kinds of events. So risk reduction was needed (and as always when something that is mostly not harmful but sometimes could be gets brought to the attention of a code committee) and the mitigation had to be principled.

There is ample human perception and performance and psychophysical evidence that humans can visually track one moving object at a time, that it takes time to switch tracks and acquire targets (sometimes called Observe, Orient, Decide, Act or OODA loop), and that the apparent speed of the target and cross-retina motion is related to the ease with which it is acquired and tracked.

There is also good empirical evidence (and confirming math) that any one point in a landing area is less likely to be impacted as the target area increases (it's related to the square of the distance to the center so doubling the distance increases safety by a factor of 4 if the size/number of "targets" is constant).

So, increasing distance:
--helps by reducing apparent motion
--helps by increasing available reaction time
--helps by increasing the proportion of area where an unintended landing would nevertheless be not harmful (by a lot, given that if other safety code provisions about overflying spectators, etc are followed, the parts coming down representing a danger to spectators are truly anomalous events--if the impact zone is in the crowd because the field is set up wrong, then the situation is even worse).

In lots of ways, I regret that the hobby is becoming as regulated as it is. One way to prevent that, as has often been cited in this discussion, is to self-regulate--help make sure that our enthusiasm is bounded sufficiently by safe practices so that when the inevitable YouTube video gets posted that scares some member of the general public, or someone heaven forfend gets hurt, we can always tell our insurers and our regulators that that activity is not part of what we do and therefore not in need of intervention.
Click to expand...

Ted, as always you are a voice of reason.
 
How did I wind up on the same side as the voice of reason. This thread is broken.
 
DavidMcCann said:
You could buy the equipment to pull it off. It's not a tax stamp situation. It's a real safety concern that you keep dodging and trying to obscure and deflect.
Click to expand...

Is it really that much of a safety issue? I keep hearing some argue it is, but it seems to be their opinion that's its that much more unsafe. For every drag race "near miss" that is brought up, there are many more single launch "near misses". Has anyone ever really looked at the difference in risk? I seriously doubt it. I've never heard of any. It's all just opinion.

My experience is NOT typical, but I've never seen a near miss during a drag race. I've seen plenty during single launches. If you have a 1 in 10000 chance of an issue with one rocket, it's only a little bit more for 10 rockets.

Since I have never seen or heard of any actual analysis or numbers, it's my opinion that it's a lot more dangerous to drive to the launch then it is to attend it. If I'm going to die that day, it's probably going to be on the highway, not the range.
 
Handeman said:
Is it really that much of a safety issue? I keep hearing some argue it is, but it seems to be their opinion that's its that much more unsafe. For every drag race "near miss" that is brought up, there are many more single launch "near misses". Has anyone ever really looked at the difference in risk? I seriously doubt it. I've never heard of any. It's all just opinion.

My experience is NOT typical, but I've never seen a near miss during a drag race. I've seen plenty during single launches. If you have a 1 in 10000 chance of an issue with one rocket, it's only a little bit more for 10 rockets.

Since I have never seen or heard of any actual analysis or numbers, it's my opinion that it's a lot more dangerous to drive to the launch then it is to attend it. If I'm going to die that day, it's probably going to be on the highway, not the range.
Click to expand...

Yep.
...I just typed out and then deleted a lengthy agreement to your points. But I figure I've said enough on this thread.
 
Last edited:
I can think of at least 5 others dangers that I feel are much more likely to happen at any launch. But I don't want to give our leaders any ideas for another ban to take away the fun of the hobby.
 
In your example it's 10 times higher....now is 10/10000 a high risk? But it is still 10x higher. In my experience watching recovery failures, catos, etc I think the failure rate causing a recovery anomoly is probably closer to 1/100 at a typical launch. The past few launches our club has had with 2-300 launches has more than two catos and a few recovery failures and tangles. None of those hit anyone but they all needed to be watched to make sure they weren't going to be a danger.
 
Last edited:
You see more solo failures than drag race failures, because I'm betting you see more solo launches.

And the issue isnt the number of failures. It's the ability to track and avoid them.
 
crossfire said:
I can think of at least 5 others dangers that I feel are much more likely to happen at any launch. But I don't want to give our leaders any ideas for another ban to take away the fun of the hobby.
Click to expand...

+1. Better to keep your mouth shut and your iPhone videos to yourself is my conclusion out of all this.
 
Last edited:
Has anyone calculated the odds of one drag rocket striking another drag rocket in flight or the chances that one rocket could change another rocket's flight path into an unsafe and/or spectator area?

When a single rocket is flying one knows the above two chances are exactly zero.

Jamey #5295
 
Drag racing is like launching into clouds. Too many risk for my taste. I never understood the appeal and still don't.
 
I really don't like the feeling that comes over me when 10+ rockets are launched and after the smoke trails disappear, like where are they. I prefer to see 10 M's launched individually closer up than all 10 farther away all at once.
 
If you think you should hide something, that tells me you know you shouldn't be doing it.
 
Well after re-reading the posts of many pro dragracers I can't help but think that if these arguments had been made during the review and comment period maybe the result would have better reflected their position.
I hope that some folks will be motivated to follow the proceedings a little more closely now. At least you wont be blindsided next time.
Yeah, I know... I also hope for an end to poverty and world peace ! :wink:
 
CzTeacherMan said:
A far better book. I find the premise quite intriguing myself. Shucking off some social norms because they're silly and all that...
Click to expand...

Many pieces of entertainment are silly- does not mean they are not entertaining. Now, if we could just make Michael Bay have to shoot low budget romantic comedies without special effects- that would be great.
 
markkoelsch said:
Many pieces of entertainment are silly- does not mean they are not entertaining. Now, if we could just make Michael Bay have to shoot low budget romantic comedies without special effects- that would be great.
Click to expand...

You mean that half-naked Megan Fox running away from Megatron isn't a romantic comedy? LoL
 
Its funny how the drag race is such a high danger but time after time we will let some one fly a Estes E9 motor which we all know has a very high rate of failure. It could land in some ones car and burn it up. it could fly into a person and burn them, it could start a fire and club would loose their launch site.
 
crossfire said:
Its funny how the drag race is such a high danger but time after time we will let some one fly a Estes E9 motor which we all know has a very high rate of failure. It could land in some ones car and burn it up. it could fly into a person and burn them, it could start a fire and club would loose their launch site.
Click to expand...

and it's a single rocket, and thus safer. Stop pouting already. Fire is a risk we have things in place to deal with. It is not comparable to not being able to track multiple rockets.

We accept some risks. Others we do not. E9s are an acceptable risk. Just because we accept one risk, does not mean we have to accept all risk. If we followed that logic train, we should allow PVC sugar M motors on the mod racks.
 

Similar threads

boatgeek
Anti-satellite warfare
Replies
23
Views
728
Bill Hanson
Bill Hanson
Bobbyg334
  • Locked
Rocket man parachutes, no response
2
Replies
31
Views
3K
cwbullet
cwbullet
Maxhiker14
L3 Project (video report)
Replies
0
Views
170
Maxhiker14
Maxhiker14
ThirstyBarbarian
  • Locked
Who would you like to see Rachel Maddow interview?
2
Replies
54
Views
1K
DAllen
DAllen
DragonRocketry
4" AT-3 Sagger Russian Anti-tank guided missile
Replies
1
Views
475
Sooner Boomer
Sooner Boomer

Latest posts

Back
Top