what is the state of rocketry

[pyroboy]

yeah, never heard of rocketry in schools in the uk, count yourself lucky lol

 

[denverdoc]

And they wonder why kids get
more overweight / obese by the day...


In the light of all frivolous / excessive litigation
and noxious post 9/11 atmosphere perhaps the Supreme
Court could streamline all existing laws, rules and regulations
just declaring the classic germanesque :

Alles Verboten !

:cry:

:lol: only cuz the alternative is tears.

 

[SpartaChris]

Chris,
I agree with some of that sentiment. But I don't see the enemy as government in the same way you do. Here I think we need to take at least part of the blame> People sue at a drop of the hat. If their kid fails, they look to blame others--in some ways, rightly so, as the schools for the most part do a miserable job.

I don't know that I blame the government completely, although it has been our government, as you pointed out, who has really allowed a lot of this behavior through the legal system. When you can sue a major corporation for millions because your kid slipped and fell while horsing around inside of a department store, or because you crashed into a parked car and spilled hot coffe on yourself, something is seriously wrong. When you can sue video game manufacturers because your kids took a rifle and shot at and killed someone on the freeway, something is horribly wrong.

I agree that our education system needs help, but I don't know that they deserve a whole finger pointed at them. Maybe half a finger, but not a whole finger. When we live in a society that embraces over-crowding so that illegal alien children can leech our tax dollars through public services such as education, we have problems.

With that being said, where are the parents stepping up to the plate to assist in the re-building of our education systems? Where are the parents taking the active interest in what their children are doing in school? And what are the parents doing to continue the education of their children when the children aren't in school?

Is government the enemy? Nah, I don't believe so. I think they try and do a lot of good most of the time. But I do believe that the government has let down it's citizens by allowing them to finger point instead of forcing them to look in the mirror.

But above all else, it is a culture of instant gratification, and building a rocket simply takes too long. Just look at the R/C scene ARF's and RTF's everywhere.

I think this has a lot of merit as well. Folks don't want to be challenged. They don't want to work to acheive something, they want it handed to them. It's sad really, because of exactly what you said. Why work to build something that might fail, when I can instead take the easy way out and fly something already built? If it fails, ok, I'm out no time at all. I'll just go home and pop in a video game instead.

 

[Lucky 94]

Snip

I think this has a lot of merit as well. Folks don't want to be challenged. They don't want to work to acheive something, they want it handed to them. It's sad really, because of exactly what you said. Why work to build something that might fail, when I can instead take the easy way out and fly something already built? If it fails, ok, I'm out no time at all. I'll just go home and pop in a video game instead.[/QUOTE]

Exactly. That is the problem. Now a days, we aren't taught to work to achieve anything. And then when you get thrown out into the real world you get slapped in the face.

 

[pyroboy]

^ too true

 

[Peartree]

im almost 18 and have many hobbies, i think that playing a playstation ect is boring id much prefer to be making advanced spudguns ect...and tbh i dont realy car if id me made a joke...when someone needs some engineering help they turn to me....whos the joke on then?

and where in from wales uk, i dont know anyone who has made rockets so i think it may be dying out....but it was never a popular thing to do here realy..

Different quote...

Of course we live in a caotic age. And why would a kid( note, these are observations of kids at my school), want to do anything that could take effort or be made a joke of. I have a former friend who dropped out of Algebra 1 just because, " It's to much work." So if people can't even complete school classes then what hope do hobbies.

I know some of you are still in school and I encourage you in your efforts not to take the easy path. Here is an observation I made years ago. I did the unpopular stuff because of my size and because that was what I was interested in. I played in the band, did school plays, knew all the guys in chess club, and excelled in math and science. Some of the huge jocks made fun of me and I thought that succeeding would be a good revenge. Years later I had a degree in engineering, a nice place to live, a good job and moved back into my old neighborhood for a while. One day I encountered one of the biggest football (American football) jocks from high school working in a car wash. Revenge wasn't sweet at all, I really felt sorry for him.

Stay in school. Don't be afraid of hard work. Don't worry about being popular. Ten years from now popular won't buy you a cup of coffee and it sure won't pay your mortgage.

 

[garydogwood]

In reply to Peartree: sounds like you took the right course.
Speaking of football:
Al Bundy once scored 4 touchdowns in a single game; now he sells shoes.

gw

 

[denverdoc]

I don't know that I blame the government completely, although it has been our government, as you pointed out, who has really allowed a lot of this behavior through the legal system. When you can sue a major corporation for millions because your kid slipped and fell while horsing around inside of a department store, or because you crashed into a parked car and spilled hot coffe on yourself, something is seriously wrong. When you can sue video game manufacturers because your kids took a rifle and shot at and killed someone on the freeway, something is horribly wrong.

I agree that our education system needs help, but I don't know that they deserve a whole finger pointed at them. Maybe half a finger, but not a whole finger. When we live in a society that embraces over-crowding so that illegal alien children can leech our tax dollars through public services such as education, we have problems.

With that being said, where are the parents stepping up to the plate to assist in the re-building of our education systems? Where are the parents taking the active interest in what their children are doing in school? And what are the parents doing to continue the education of their children when the children aren't in school?.....
.

Good luck with tort reform when most politicians are lawyers:lol:

As to education, your points are well taken. What I find sad is that the country's budget for education R/D is something like 1/2 a percent of the Natl Institute of Health. So we get a bunch of idiots living longer. Maybe, if more critical thinking skills were taught, we wouldn't have a bunch a morons following safety nazi's advice....

As an aside our usual domination in Nobel prizes was nowhere to be found this year, the 2 americans that shared in the Medicine prize are actually Italian....

 

[caheaton]

"As an aside our usual domination in Nobel prizes was nowhere to be found this year, the 2 americans that shared in the Medicine prize are actually Italian...."

Don't mean to hijack this thread, but that quote made me think of I movie I saw on TV recently...it was entitled "Idiocracy". The movie had some pretty coarse jokes (which I normally wouldn't like), but the premise intrigued me. It's a comedy set several hundred years in the future and the morons have outbred the intelligent to the point that intelligent people are nearly extinct. (The intelligent chose to limit the number of children to only those they could support while the morons just used them as a chance to get more welfare). Into this future steps a soldier (Private Joe Bowers) who was part of a Pentagon study into time travel (but had the misfortune of being forgotten about after the program's budget was cut). The movie itself is over the top, but there is a strong kernal of truth behind its humor.

Some quoted dialog from the movie:

Frito: [Acting as Joe's public defender] "It says here you robbed a hospital. Why'd you do that?"

Pvt. Joe Bowers: "I'm not guilty!"

Frito: "That's not what the other lawyer said."

Judge Hank: "Now prosecutor, why you think he done it?"

Prosecutor: " 'Kay. Number one your honor, just look at him. And B, we've got all this, like, evidence, of how, like, this guy didn't even pay at the hospital. And I heard that he doesn't even have his tattoo."(everbody has a UPC barcode)
[crowd boos]

Prosecutor: "I know! And I'm all, 'you've gotta be shi**in' me!' But check this out man, judge should be like..."
[bangs fist on table]

Prosecutor: " 'guilty!' Peace."​

 

[shreadvector]

Suspended animation, not time travel. They forget about them and they get un-suspended 500 years in the future.

Maya Rudolph co-stars.

I'll bet that Costco, Carl's Jr. and Starbucks did not pay for product placement. Gatorade must have threatened to sue, since the name was munged.

 

[caheaton]

"Suspended animation, not time travel."
oops...my bad. That's correct. That's what happens when you get old
and your memory gets faulty? (Or maybe I'm just already an unsuspecting victim of the dilution of the gene pool?!)

Oh well, the gist of it is the same, and Joe was looking for the time machine to get back home (won't say anymore about that one, just in case someone wants to watch the movie).

Craig

 

[SCE to AUX]

"Idiocracy" was an interesting film on several levels. Like Mike Judge's better known creation, "Beavis and Butthead", the actual targets of the humor just laugh along with the crude jokes, completely unaware that THEY are being made fun of. Yes, there is a lot of "potty humor". but it is intended to define the state of American culture in the future, rather than to be laughed at in and of itself.

Despite the popularity of the director's previous work, the film got an extremely limited release, and essentially no advertising. In my opinion, this was probably due to the fact that the film is as much an indictment of corporate America and the purveyors of pop culture as it is of the stupidity of the American populace.

For example, the top grossing film (and Oscar winner for best picture) was simply titled "@$$", and consisted of just that, a 90 minute closeup of someones bare butt, occasionally passing gas. One of the top TV shows was similar to one of those "funniest home videos" programs, with people repeatedly getting kicked or otherwise struck in the gonads. The US is experiencing agricultural collapse because a sports drink manufacturer has purchased control of the water supply (and a large portion of the federal government), and crops are now irrigated with "Brawndo", which supposedly has the "electrolytes that plants crave", but which is slowly making the soil toxic. Plain water is apparently only used for flushing toilets. Starbucks now offers prostitution services along with coffee, and public executions are televised nationwide as entertainment.

If you haven't seen this film, I recommend it. You may never look at our current anti-intellectual corporate mass culture the same way again...

 

[denverdoc]

I'm intrigued by your description--will give it a spin..
Thanks.

 

[Lucky 94]

I thought this was the state of ROCKETRY. Not the faulty and weird .... ( insert whatever you are ticked off about on this forum) system.

 

[SCE to AUX]

I thought this was the state of ROCKETRY. Not the faulty and weird .... ( insert whatever you are ticked off about on this forum) system.

Well, wouldn't the state of rocketry (and other technical/scientific hobbies) be rather closely tied into the general culture's prevailing attitudes towards science and technology?

If you look back, during those periods when society decided that science and engineering are important and worth investing in, you see an upward trend in the number of people (particularly young people) who are involved in things like model rocketry or ham radio. Conversely, when we are in a period like the present, when school science classes are being dumbed down to allow more class time to prepare for standardized tests, when hope for future careers in sciences or engineering are being rapidly outsourced away, and the only images of scientists and engineers that ever appear in the media are characters like "Dilbert" or the "Nutty Professor", there is a natural trend AWAY from such pursuits.

Add in the "instant gratification" culture promoted in the mass media (how many kids today would have the patience to build a traditional rocket model, or assemble something like a Heathkit stereo?), the increasing lack of role models for such pursuits (lots of kids growing up without a father who putters around in the garage or basement workshop), and the lack of anything REALLY exciting happening in manned spaceflight since the Apollo program, and you get the situation we are currently in.

 

[mrbusdriver]

I'm accepting, slowly, the increased regulation of the upper end of the hobby. Hoping for better days, but we'll see.
My concern is the "Jacka#$" mentality..."here's something with flash and fire, what absolutely stupid and assinine thing can we do with it?" This really bothers me.
But at the other end of the spectrum, 4-H teams up with rocketry, TARCS, and other programs are showing the serious and educational side of rocketry. It's a PR battle, and so many newcomers are seeing the benefits of participating.
I ask the kids I build with..."when have you ever built something that can go 300 MPH plus...safely?"
Rocketry teaches so much, paying forward is the key.
Dave

 

[denverdoc]

Well, wouldn't the state of rocketry (and other technical/scientific hobbies) be rather closely tied into the general culture's prevailing attitudes towards science and technology?

If you look back, during those periods when society decided that science and engineering are important and worth investing in, you see an upward trend in the number of people (particularly young people) who are involved in things like model rocketry or ham radio. Conversely, when we are in a period like the present, when school science classes are being dumbed down to allow more class time to prepare for standardized tests, when hope for future careers in sciences or engineering are being rapidly outsourced away, and the only images of scientists and engineers that ever appear in the media are characters like "Dilbert" or the "Nutty Professor", there is a natural trend AWAY from such pursuits.

Add in the "instant gratification" culture promoted in the mass media (how many kids today would have the patience to build a traditional rocket model, or assemble something like a Heathkit stereo?), the increasing lack of role models for such pursuits (lots of kids growing up without a father who putters around in the garage or basement workshop), and the lack of anything REALLY exciting happening in manned spaceflight since the Apollo program, and you get the situation we are currently in.

Well said. Bravo!! (Forget about the Heathkit stereo, how about a 10 part xstal receiver??)

 

[Peartree]

In our little corner of the universe kids regularly (4H, FFA, etc) spend a year raising, training and grooming their animals for the next year's fair, just so the animals can be auctioned off as some one else's lunch. The up side is that the kids get to keep the money toward their college fund. Some of these kids are raising state fair winners (in multiple states). There may be stupid kids who shouldn't reproduce in order to tidy up the gene pool, but there are still plenty of kids that give me hope for the future. I still hear that employers like to hire farm kids (even when they are adults) because they know how to work. Believe me, I see a high school junior walk past my house every day on her way to her job at the local restaurant. if the weather is good, she will also help her step-dad put up a thousand or so bales of hay before she goes to bed. No mistake, I did say SHE.

The future's in good hands...