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Rockets Carry the Mail
June 1948 Popular Science

June 1948 Popular Science
June 1948 Popular Science Cover - Airplanes and Rockets[Table of Contents]

Wax nostalgic over early technology. See articles from Popular Science, published 1872 - 2021. All copyrights are hereby acknowledged.

Is that Vern Estes in that foxhole preparing to push the launch button? Probably not, but the materials and methods used here in this 1948 issue of Popular Science magazine by amateur rocketeers are a big part of the motivation Mr. Estes had for starting his eponymously named model rocket company in 1958. To wit: "Rocket is driven by 35 pounds of micro grain powder, mostly zinc dust and sulphur, which burns out in four seconds. It climbs to 4,000 feet and reaches speed of more than 400 m.p.h." Handling the explosive and sometimes unstable chemicals required for the rocket engines was extremely dangerous, and resulted in many instances of loss of fingers and eyes, severe burns, and even death. The safety record of Estes engines is borne out by more than sixty years of continuous production. If they were not nearly perfectly safe, lawyers would have put Estes out of business long ago. Even Olympic level stupid has not produced an event capable that anything other than the user's idiocy was responsible for an engine-related accident.

Rockets Carry the Mail

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Launching tower, below, is 14 feet tall. The rocket slides along an aluminum T-stock on three ball-bearing clips. Operator in foreground is connecting ignition wires to fuse.

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Mail-toting rocket is a stainless-steel tube 11 feet 3 inches long. Unloaded, it weighs only 60 pounds. Cost: $50. Letters are carried inside four tail fins that stabilize it in flight.

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In foxhole a safe 250 feet from the launcher, rocketeer below closes contact to fuse squid, now packed in rocket's tail behind propelling fuel. Car battery supplies the firing charge.

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At its destination spent rocket is dug from salty earth in which it buried itself on landing. Tail is then removed for easier handling, and a brace is used to take covers off fins.

Water barriers and impassable terrain may be no more able to halt the mails than the traditional snow, rain, heat, or gloom of night, if these experiments work out. Rocket postmen can hurdle obstacles in a .few seconds, as shown in these pictures. Here the fiery missiles are carrying letters a mile and a half across Searles Dry Lake in southern California.

The demonstrators are amateur rocketeers of the Glendale, Calif., Reaction Research Society, whose 90 members are mostly high-school and college students. Their work carries forward experiments broken off in Austria, Germany, and England when rockets were drafted for war.

The equipment seen in action here could speed the delivery of letters to off-shore islands surrounded by heavy surf or to villages in mountainous territory where a mile or two might be a day's walk. It could also be adapted for use on mail steamers that must travel for hours along a coast before making port.

 - Airplanes and Rockets

Rocket is driven by 35 pounds of micro grain powder, mostly zinc dust and sulphur, which burns out in four seconds. It climbs to 4,000 feet and reaches speed of more than 400 m.p.h.

 - Airplanes and Rockets

Opened fin shows compartments where letters are carried. Each of the four sections of the rocket's tail has room for 300. Fins are made of aluminum sheets on frame of 1/2-inch plywood.

 

 

Posted February 24, 2024

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Carpe Diem! (Seize the Day!)

Even during the busiest times of my life I have endeavored to maintain some form of model building activity. This site has been created to help me chronicle my journey through a lifelong involvement in model aviation, which all began in Mayo, MD ...

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