CPSC's model rocketry alarms: Historical

[SharkWhisperer]

Model rocketry is friggin' dangerous. Even LPR/MPR!!!! That has been the emotional opinion of the Consumer Product Safety Committee since it's creation in 1972, 48 mostly useless years ago. When there weren't enough actual threats to health (poorly designed toys that are choking hazards for toddlers and drunks), they needed to transform and justify their existence. And they have gotten good at it--it's their livelihood. They even have modern computers! The CPSC currently is guided by 5 (somehow) appointed Commissioners, with one in charge (the Chairman). They are affiliated with no other government agency and report directly to Congress. They are your nanny's nanny. Your surrogate mother.

Here's an example of their (retrospective) investigation of model rocketry-associated burn injuries in children (to 15 y/o; decades away from being BAR's), in which their intensive study covered 18 whole years. Now this particular report was looooong ago for some of us, spanning the 70's (sorry millenials) the "1970s" to the 1990s. From the reasonably respected Journal of Emergency Medicine report (https://doi.org/10.1016/0736-4679(94)90274-7 and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0736467994902747 , published in 1994, after rigorously collecting data for the prior 18 years, they found that there was ONE model rocket burn injury report of substance, nationwide, each of those 18 years--1 rocket motor-related burn injury (mostly minor) per year (!) associated with 11-15 year-olds (their study population) "playing" with highly energetic starter kits and BT20 "research" designed rockets. They concluded was a critical need for additional regulation. That was over a quarter century ago.

Probably 20-50x that number of kids (I'm guessing) probably had many, many, many more important issues with strike-anywhere matches (common then) accidentally going off in their pockets before they got a chance to fire up their parents old M80/torpedo stockpiles. Or sparkler burns around the 4th of July--those remain common and are a critical national health concern. I am actually a medical research scientist, former university professor, and dual pyrotechnician/rocketeer (really: both an MSci and PhD, with extensive postdoc training at a well-known top teaching medical universiy), so I digress... I think they should team up with Consumer Reports and investigate dangerously malfunctioning infant cribs and leave rocketry/pyrotechnics expertise and recommendations to the BATFE (though I have much to say about that idea too). The CPSC actually tried to ban some little neodynium magnets---MAGNETS--because they were a choking hazard and were too powerful, believe that?!? CPSC lost in federal court. Those magnets? They're still on the market, with some even bigger ones available now. Haven't heard about too many lives saved by those misguided efforts of some gov shills trying to justify their existence. Though Reagan tried to disband their worthless entity, they remain and are experts at child-resistant packaging. It's a clown show. With power. And you pay for that nonsense if you actually have a job and pay taxes.

The annual fireworks injury report is usually interesting, though. I'd upload one but it's not on this puter and I'm too lazy to go searching right now. But c'mon. We DO this hobby. We KNOW the risks. There are few serious accidents (in true pyrotechics, too--not counting the drunks lighting commercial 1.75" baby mortars atop their heads--that's just Darwinism at work, just not efficiently).

The CPSC is great at making sure clothing buttons are large enough to not easily be swallowed by infants, for sure. But their remotest involvement in regulating model rocketry, given their personnel composition and experience, remains simply ridiculous.

My rant.

 

[cbrarick]

Next you're gonna tell me that jarts are dangerous - and not the rocket ones.

what's next? Cars? Booze? cigarettes? water (hey, you could drown in as little as a tablespoon)??

life's dangerous. Get living or get dying.

 

[shockie]

well....i've always said you can't really protect stupid people from doing stupid things unless you hype a pandemic and make them stay at home where they still do stupid things like falling down and breaking their leg. Or burning down the house. And I also don't think all life is precious or matters either. My life is more precious and matters more to me than your life does. ok? get over it. Survival of the fittest. Darwinism. Lord of the Flies. If you slip off a cliff taking a selfie, guess what, you deserve to die. If push comes to shove and you have food and I have guns and ammo and you don't, guess whose food belongs to whom? All your stuff belongs to me. Take no prisoners. The Walking Dead. I'm being obviously facetious. Both the CPSC and Department of Indoctrination, Propaganda, Brainwashing and Social Engineering, aka the Department of I couldn't educate a mouse If I tried ,should be defunded and shutdown.

True Stories:

When I was 13 I took apart my 1st Estes rocket motor. Why? To see what it looked like on the inside. Just being curious. Back then you could actually go down to your local pharmacy (if you lived in a rural area like I did) and buy stuff like potassium nitrate(salt petre) and sulfur and charcoal. SO I took apart the Estes engine, ground up the BP charge and added my own KNO3/C/S to it until I had it wrapped several sheets of paper about 3" in diameter.

In the back yard at night I set it on fire... Well, it didn't explode, luckily for me, but I did have a 3 ft tall exhaust flame straight up for a few seconds....It actually burned so hot that no grass would grow in that 4" diameter spot for years afterward. Also, around this age I actually had a model rocket literally go off in my face once. Because a friend thought it would be funny. It wasn't. Didn't hurt me but scared the poop outta me.

I could go on and tell you about the times neighborhood friends and I shot bb and pellet pistols and rifles at one another ...for fun.... and yes sometimes it hurt... I had my bb pistol, taken away from me by my mom, because I shot up the electrical meter and the electrical meter reading guy complained about it.

I used to roll model cars down a dirt hill that was loaded with glue and firecrackers. I once climbed to the top of a 60ft tree and literally swayed back and forth. I once caught a field on fire and had to call the fire department. I was between 8-10 yrs old at the time.

The point being as children we all do stupid things. Most of us live thru our mistakes and end up dying of old age.