Precautions and Safety
Model rocketry is a safe and widespread hobby. Individuals such as G. Harry Stine and Vernon Estes helped to ensure this by developing and publishing the NAR Model Rocket Safety Codes and by commercially producing safe, professionally designed and manufactured model rocket motors. The safety code is a list of guidelines and is not at all mandatory for those practicing model rocketry unless one is a member of the National Association of Rocketry.
One of the main motivations for the development of the hobby in the 1950s and 1960s was to provide young people the opportunity to construct flying rocket models without having to engage in dangerous construction of motor units and direct handling of explosive propellants.
The NAR and the TRA successfully sued the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives(BATFE) over the classification of Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant(APCP), the most commonly used propellant in high-power rocket motors, as an explosive. The March 13, 2009 decision by DC District court judge Reggie Walton removed APCP from the list of regulated explosives, essentially eliminating BATFE regulation of hobby rocketry.
Read more about this topic: Model Rocket
Famous quotes containing the words precautions and/or safety:
“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace between our parents’ safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)