The meeting was attended by 7 members. The January Launch had been canceled. The USC students had been planing a test, but that fell through, there were no other firings planed for that day.

Osvaldo relayed for Matt, our treasurer, that a Paypal account for the RRS is being worked on. They want to have a separate account for Paypal as a security measure.

Chris reported on our progress in the 501c3 nonprofit process. We’re getting free help from the USC Law school’s small business clinic where law students work with real-life clients for experience. The student helping us will be submitting out paperwork soon and we should know the results mid to late fall. Having a non-profit status at the federal level can help us with receiving donations either monetary or equipment wise since it will be tax deductible. Frank let us know that Ford was once interested in making a donation but passed since it wouldn’t be tax deductible without the 501c3 status.

Osvaldo bought up 2 things that need work at the MTA. First the tar-paper on the blockhouse is coming up and is in need of repair. Second he is interested in expanding our firefighting capability at the MTA. Currently we have pressurized water fire extinguishers, but if a fire starts where a rocket lands, which can be a long way off, and if we have to approach on foot, the fire could get out of hand by the time we get there. We discussed several ideas ranging from getting a military surplus water trailer outfitted with a water pump to be towed to the fire scene by a 4 wheel drive vehicle, to strapping a few fire extinguishers to a dune buggy or quad.

Osvaldo made the offer for use of payload space on his next rocket launch, if anyone in interested in having their equipment launched on a beta. Frank brought and gave out some surplus RRS stickers.

Osvaldo brought a book ‘Planet Mojave’ (ISBN 978-0-6154664-4-6). It’s a collection of works from the Ridge Writers, a writers club (http://www.planetmojave.com/). There are some pieces written by long time member Maryann Butterfield and one is about the RRS.

Don’t forget about checking out the new website www.RRS.org. My last post was on a neat RRS orbital launch vehicle proposal from the 40’s. My next post will be on a neat Russian text book on rocketry I’ve found. Be sure to send an email to reactionresearchsociety@gmail.com with you’re name email and username if you want to be set up with a members account.

I am making progress on my reports for the next issue of the RRS newsletter. Let me know if you have something that you would like to be in the next issue.

You can get a hold of me at reactionresearchsociety@gmail.com

-Richard Garcia

As I noted a while back in June of 2013 I got a hold of a copy of an old newspaper article from John Mariano about an RRS project. luckily I got a photo copy of the article which I scanned to PDF latter, but unfortunately it was done in 3 parts, and the clerk doing left a gap between 2 of them. I’ve been waiting to be able to edit it to post it. Now that I’ve been able to edit PDFs with Libre Office I’ve edited it and photo shopped it in MS Pain. (extra points if you can point out where)

In 1948 the RRS proposed to build a 4 stage Oxygen/Hydrogen rocket capable of delivering 100lb to orbit. Now Thats ambitious! Obviously the project never came to fruition or else Aerospace History might look very different. An armature orbital launch vehicle, such as that, would be crazy ambitious even today let alone back in 1948. Although, I do believe an amateur launch vehicle is within the farthest reach of “amateurs.” It would have to be something similar in scale to Copenhagen Suborbitals.

-Richard Garcia

Good news! I’ve been in need of a way to edit PDF’s so I could edit the scans I’ve made of RRS newsletters to get them ready to post  in the members section. I had recently found Libre Office,and the draw program was working except for one problem. The text that come up from the scanner’s optical character recognition (OCR) was laid over the images of the page themselves instead of being invisible. After a lot of fruitless attempts I finally found a solution that will let me edit the PDFs and keep the OCR in the documents. I just had to move the page image to the foreground, obscuring the text but still letting it be selectable and searchable in the final PDF.

And now I’m finally done. I’ve uploaded the 5 newsletters which you can find in the RRS Newsletters section. (You need to be logged in as a member to actually download them.) I also was able to repair the PDF of “Vol. 53, #4 December, 1996”. It was missing some pages. Its not a perfect repair. For two 2 of the missing pages I only had low quality black and white scans, but I was able to import the colored version of the pictures on those pages from the “High Power Rockery” magazine version of the article. It was pages 15 and 22 if anyone is curious.

I also edited and uploaded the text that the RRS printed to accompany the RRS composite propellant class. That’s under Other RRS Articles. (again you’ll need to be logged in.) I was also be able to piece together an interesting old newspaper article on a RRS proposed satellite launch vehicle. I’ll be posting that here on the sight soon.

The new uploads are:

Vol. 53, #2 June, 1996
Vol. 53, #4 December, 1996 (repaired)
Vol. 54, #1, March, 1997
Vol. 54, #2 June, 1997
Vol. 56, #3 September, 1999
Vol. 58, #1 March, 2001
RRS Composite Propellant Course (in Other RRS Articles)