rockets

One of Robert's favorite pasttimes from the ages of 10 to 13 or so, was building and flying model rockets. For those unfamiliar with the hobby, it was dominated by the Estes company in Colorado, who made a huge variety of model rocket kits. Some of these were scale models of historic rockets such as the V-2 or the Mercury Redstone, others were fantasy rockets, and others still were strictly functional. All of them flew, using either solid fuel units or pressurized liquid fuel-- some of them to a quarter-mile high or more. When he was building them, Estes made most of their kits from balsa wood and cardboard. It was great fun to customize them and even more fun to launch them from his pad. Although they still produce kits, plastic has, sadly, found its way into most components.

Of course, there's a huge distance between model rockets the size of one's arm and those intended to carry men to the stars, but the impulse is the same. Although the space race didn't last much past the early-1970s, some of us still eagerly await the completion of the International Space Station and the commercialization of spaceflight. Here's what it should've looked like: