The meeting was attended by 13 people. The next launch date has been announced for Sunday March 25th. (Edit: this has been cancelled)

The separate Paypal account for the RRS has been created and Paypal has been setup for it. We can now (finally) take donations online. There is now a Paypal donate button on the sidebar. I’m still working on getting membership payments done online, I’m having trouble getting this particular plug-in for paid membership to operate the way Frank and Osvaldo would like it to run. I’ll keep working on it until I come up with something.

John Mariano who has been volunteering as a docent at the California Science Center has been working on getting the RRS represented there for its place in rocketry history. The Science Center being a large and well known museum has a lot of people who want their stuff shown, so the Science Center has requirements and bureaucracy that need to be met. In many cases the science center isn’t interested in adding to it’s permanent collection or taking ownership of the exhibit. But if what you have meets their expectations of merit and quality for display they’ll allow for a sort of middle ground. They are willing to let you show it at the museum at times but you have to take it with you when you leave. So that means they want it to have wheels and be battery powered if it needs electricity.

This is what John has been working on and he has brought the display to show us the progress. The frame is complete with wheels and battery power. He has a monitor set up and an LED marquee. He also has had a poster made with a diagram of most of the worlds launch vehicles past and present on one side. The other side has a large RRS logo and a summary of newtons three laws. He’s still working on completing it, and he’s currently looking for a good place to store it while not in use. He also mentioned that he’s be glad to lend it out for any sort of related presentations RRS members might have. I may take him up on that offer the next time I go to a SpaceUp.

Charles Hoult has a lot of experience in the rocketry industry particularly with sounding rockets and has been mentoring CSULA’s rocketry team, Sonic Eagle. Three members from that team presented there design for this years ESRA’s (Experimental Sounding Rocket Association) Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competitions held in Utah. Their Rocket will use a N2000 motor and is expected to fly at 100 ft/s. It will carry 2 payloads, an atmospheric dust collector and yo-yo de-spin mechanism. They may be pursuing patenting some of their work on the dust collector. The parachute will be released from the side of the rocket just forward of the motor. A drogue will deploy first and the main will be in a cocoon until deployment. They will also have an umbilical to remotely control and monitor the electronics on board the rocket prior to launch. They will be doing a test launch at the March 25th firing.

My contract at work may be coming to a close, and I’m waiting for a reply to a job interview so I don’t yet know where I’ll be living by next month. I may stay here in Perris, or move to Mojave, or stay a while back up in Hanford again. That means I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep doing meeting and launch reports in the coming months but obviously I will If I can.

You can get a hold of me at my new RRS email editor@rrs.org

-Richard Garcia