Last year was one of the biggest in HARA’s recent history. As HARA President, I wanted to grow the club’s membership, improve attendance at regular club meetings, & promote HARA to the public.  Club meeting attendance has been very high with a lot of new faces. Read more

“And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”  

– Col. Frank Borman, December 24, 1968

December 5^th marked the last club meeting of the year.  The meeting opened with a short Tech Talk.  Duane Mayer gave a detailed step-by-step on how to build homemade rocket motor igniters.  Read more

HARA’s TRA Prefect Fred Kepner delivered a great tech talk on parachutes at the September 5th meeting. Read more

“New and advanced aerospace technologies must be taken to flight early to “separate the real from the imagined, and to make known the overlooked and the unexpected problems”

– Hugh Dryden

On July 11^th, HARA hosted Jim Jenkins, retired Boeing ground test systems engineers whose long and distinguished career has included testing the Apollo Saturn V stages at MSFC and Stennis Space Center.  Mr. Jenkins shared with us a photographic history of rockets, launch vehicles, and test ranges offering a very interesting and exclusive perspective on project Apollo.   Read more

“Launching is optional… recovery is mandatory.”

On May 2^nd, HARA hosted Michael Wright, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s chief historian for a guest speaker session. Mr. Wright shared with us the history of rocketry from Greek and Roman mythology, to their ancient Chinese use in warfare, through the age of enlightenment when rockets transitioned into tools of science, and up to the 1960’s when rockets allowed mankind to make giant leaps for all mankind. Read more

Houston, We have a Problem” ~ Apollo 13 – April 13, 1971

At the last HARA meeting, Walt Stafford, our resident expert composites and XP motor maker brought in some samples of his fiberglass airframes and nosecones as a primmer for the composites workshop we had of April 6^th. Read more

Test what you fly, and fly what you test”

Thursday night’s meeting was another success.  Attendance has been up 3 fold and the new focus of the meetings on helping people grow in hobby rocketry and show off their projects seems to be resonating rather well.  I gave a 45 minute presentation on dual deployment recovery systems in our first in a series of Tech Talks that cover lots rocket building techniques.   Read more

“We Are On Ascent” ~ Vince Huegele

Thank you everyone for coming to the meeting last night. We had a great turn out with nearly 30 people in attendance and a lot of new faces. We kicked off the meeting with our guest speaker and a few pizzas.  Mr. Chuck Pierce who is branch chief of Spacecraft Propulsion Systems at MSFC and has a rich background with space shuttle and hypergolic propulsion systems, shared with us the propulsion research being done here in Huntsville.  Mr. Pierce brought along a space shuttle reaction control motor to show off. Read more