“Launching is optional… recovery is mandatory.”
On May 2nd, 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 6th. 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
By Vince Huegele
We don’t get many requests for launch demonstrations after Thanksgiving, but that’s when Lincoln Academy called us to help them with their Spaceweek. They had heard there was a rocket club in town and found our website. Read more
Greetings members and friends. First, thank you Ray for your years of service as HARA President. Secondly, thank you David, Bill, Josh, Vince, and Fred for volunteering as officers for 2013. We are already hard at work preparing for the upcoming flying season. I want to share some news with you from the Officers. Read more
by Bill Cooke
Mention Estes to a rocketeer these days, and you usually get a smirk; they are famous for Ready-To-Fly (RTF) and other easily built low power kits. Not much thrill to many in flying birds using 13 mm, 18mm, and 24 mm motors (1/4 A to E impulse). But that’s changing… Read more
by Bill Cooke
TARC is like the real world of rocket design in that the teams must resort to design/simulation software to help flesh out the initial concept, making sure it can meet the goals before pressing on to actual construction/testing. Here the vendors have come to the rescue in providing three outstanding packages, any one of which can be used to design a winning TARC entry. Read more
by Bill Cooke
NAR and the AIAA have just released the objectives for the 2013 TARC season. In brief, they are
At first glance. this seems simple; after all, each of these has been used in past years. No surprises, so pretty easy challenge for the TARC teams, right? Read more
by Bill Cooke
Every year Cub Scout Pack 351 has their annual ‘rocket blast’, in which the cubs fly rockets they have recently bought or built. HARA – in the form of Chuck Pierce and various others who show up to assist – always provides the launch setup and range control, which has been fairly easy for the past couple of years due to the use of the USSRC/Space Camp launch facilities. Read more
