For some reason, over the last few days, Kim and I have been noticing the cloud formations surrounding our hilltop. I cannot say that they are dramatically different than they’ve ever been, but sometimes we just take note of their beauty and vastness that much more. I have always had a thing about clouds. I first noticed my attraction to them when I was in Ninth Grade, in my one year at prep school at Hebron Academy in Maine. They were on my mind for two reasons. First, I had gotten into model rocketry. For those of you who did likewise, you will remember Estes Model Rockets. Estes Industries has a fascinating history that parallels the Space Race era we of my age remember so well. Vern Estes founded the company in Denver, Colorado in 1958. He didn’t invent model rocketry – that credit goes to Orville Carlisle and G. Harry Stine in the early 1950s, but Vern revolutionized it by developing a way to mass-produce reliable, safe, and affordable solid-fuel rocket engines. Before Estes, model rocket motors were handmade and inconsistent. Vern developed machinery to mass-produce the composite propellant motors with consistent performance and built-in safety features (the clay nozzle and delay element). This made model rocketry accessible to kids rather than just serious hobbyists. The Golden Years of model rocketry were also the golden years of the space race, 1960s-1970s. Estes was perfectly positioned when the Space Race captured America’s imagination and kids like me wanted to be astronauts and engineers, so it all fit. Schools embraced rocketry for science education, but let’s get real…it was fun and it was cool and it was as close to blowing shit up as we kids could get.
First, it was about building a model and I think it’s safe to say that anything that was like a model in those days was at the top of most kids’ wish lists. I could not get enough of model building, whether it was planes, ships, cars or rockets. And there was electricity involved…granted it was DC with a battery, but there was a spark and that was enough to keep us interested. That spark came from attaching a dry cell battery to a lead wire that clipped to a nichrome-coated wire that would heat up and flare when you turned on the juice. That wire was shoved up into a solid fuel rocket engine that had a ceramic nozzle and then some mysterious propellant inside. Estes engines used (and still use) black powder composite – essentially a carefully formulated mixture of potassium nitrate (oxidizer) – about 70%, charcoal (fuel) – about 15%, sulfur (fuel and lowers ignition temp) – about 15%, and a binder to hold it all together. This is compressed into a solid grain inside the thick cylindrical cardboard motor casing. It’s basically a very controlled gunpowder formulation. Vern Estes chose black powder for several brilliant reasons. It was safer and burned reliably but relatively slowly (compared to modern composite propellants). It won’t explode if ignited in open air (safety, again). It was manufacturable and could be mass-produced consistently with 1950s-60s equipment. It was predictable and had very consistent thrust curves, making flight performance reliable. No special licensing was required and there were no permits needed like with more exotic propellants. It had a delay element since black powder could be formulated differently for the delay charge (to burns slower) and the ejection charge pointed forward (which would pop the parachute at the end of the flight). And, it was a cost advantage because it used cheap raw materials that were easy to produce at scale.
It was all very well thought out. The value was in making the process seem so “professional”. There were three stages inside these rocket engines. Each motor had three distinct sections of propellant: propellant grain (thrust phase) for fast-burning ignition and take-off, a delay element (coast phase) for slow-burning, to give it some realism of flight, and an ejection charge (recovery) that produced gas pressure to pop the parachute. This hobby had EVERYTHING. There was model building that was pretty simple, but made you feel like it was YOUR rocket. There were decals to personalize the ship. There was a launch pad with a long metal rod to guide the rocket upward. there was a control center, which we all made in wood shop with toggles and little red lights and switches that made you feel like Mission Control. The engine had heft and felt very serious. The rockets had the ability to include a payload if you wanted to send a bug or something into space. And then there was the parachute…and what kid doesn’t love parachutes to chase as they float to earth.
There were almost always two or more of us doing this together, so it was a good team hobby. With engines costing $3-6, we could only launch one or two per session, but that was enough to get our juices flowing. While Estes was all about safety, there was still a danger element involved, which made it all the more exciting. I remember once having a launch fizzle and when I walked up and bent down to see if the nichrome wire had dislodged, I realized too late that it would have been better to disconnect the battery before approaching the rocket. When I bent over the launch pad I just jiggled the wire and the rocket ignited and raced up the rod with a whoosh, about an inch from my right ear. That was a pretty exciting ten minutes while I waited to see if my hearing returned.
Estes catalogs became wish books for aspiring rocket scientists like me. Estes is credited with launching (pun intended) millions of kids into STEM careers. Many NASA engineers, aerospace workers, and scientists and aspiring chemists like me probably started with Estes rockets. It probably also drove some folks to work on derivatives risk management desks as well…go figure.
While I was doing that, I was also taking Earth Science and learning about things like weather and clouds. I’m sure I had my head in the clouds in those days, but I’m not so sure that ended up being a bad thing. As I got older, the fascination with model rocketry and even with chemistry faded, but the obsession with clouds never left me. There is something so majestic about them and it is one of the reason I like the great West as I do. That whole Big Sky thing means that I get an eyeful of clouds anywhere I go out here and almost every day I take the time to glance around. I am sure that our sunset views from our hilltop cause us to notice the cloud formations all the more. Right now the sun is setting and the clouds that are covering the horizon from the far south to the far north are amazing. The orange sunset slicing though the layers of stratus clouds is nothing short of inspiring. My cloud dreams started long ago, but I’m happy to report that they are as important to my days today as they were when I was throwing model rockets up at them.