Tag Archives: John Mariano

75th anniversary symposium was a success!

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The Reaction Research Society (RRS.ORG) was happy to celebrate its 75th anniversary as the country’s oldest continuously operating amateur rocketry society on April 21, 2018. At the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena, California, we shared this special occasion with over 300 people from the Los Angeles and San Diego area and welcomed several guests from places further away.

(left to right) Osvaldo Tarditti, Bill Janczewski, Dave Nordling, Jim Gross, Frank Miuccio, Larry Hoffing, Alastair Martin, Richard Garcia, Bill Claybaugh, Drew Cortopassi, Chris Lujan

RRS member, Michael Lunny mans the front desk at the 2018 RRS symposium

RRS members, Jim Gross and John Mariano at the 2018 symposium

Osvaldo Tarditti, George James, George Dosa and Jerry Irvine at the RRS symposium

Bill Claybaugh and RRS founder, George James, at the 2018 RRS symposium

The RRS had a display of some of our society projects past and present. Also, some of our members had their projects on display including Richard Garcia’s liquid rocket and Bill Claybaugh’s massive two-stage rocket.

Richard Garcia discusses his liquid rocket vehicle at the 2018 symposium

An early liquid rocket test motor from George Dosa, furfuryl alcohol and nitric acid

RRS micrograin rockets on display with historical notes

Bill Claybaugh, Osvaldo Tarditti and Bill Janczewski stand before Claybaugh’s two-stage solid rocket on display

Photo montage of micrograin rocket launches

All thirteen RRS mail flights from 1947 – 1990

We had copies of the special 75th anniversary edition of the RRS Astrojet newsletter available for sale at the symposium. Thank you to Bill Janczewski for his hard work in making this high quality newsletter and the bright sign on the column for everyone to see as they came in. The Astrojet can still be purchased through our RRS.ORG website at our PayPal button if you write a note for “Astrojet, (X) copies” and send your mailing address.

Or just simply contact the RRS by email.
secretary@rrs.org

75th anniversary issue of the Astrojet newsletter on sale

We shared our exhibition space with the Los Angeles Air Force Base’s (LA AFB) Space and Missile Command (SMC) as they presented the long history of SMC. Our thanks to Lt. Col. Porter and his team for having a huge display of the Air Force’s contributions to space, national security and improvements to our daily lives. Also, the air-driven rocket launcher demonstration in the courtyard was a big hit.

Karen Austin, Director of SMC History at the 2018 RRS symposium

LA AFB SMC history on display at the 2018 RRS symposium

Lt. Col. Porter speaks at the SMC history exhibit

Also, just outside the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena, was our colleagues at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Community Safety Partnership (CSP). Officers who have supported and participated in the rocket build classes we’ve had with Watts and Compton area schools were on hand to answer questions and show off the fun we’ve had over this last year.

LAPD CSP at the 2018 RRS symposium

We had several universities exhibiting and presenting at the RRS symposium including University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Southern California (USC) and California State University Long Beach (CSULB). All of them had impressive work to show with flights pending in just a few weeks before the semester or quarter ends.

CSU Long Beach exhibits and presents at the 2018 RRS symposium

The Additive Rocket Corporation of San Diego exhibited and presented their unique technology.

The Additive Rocket Corporation of San Diego exhibits and presents at the RRS symposium

Other exhibitors at the RRS symposium was our fellow amateur rocketry group, Rocketry Organization of California (ROC).
Rocketry Organization of California

ROC on display at the 2018 RRS symposium

The Notre Dame Academy was also present at our symposium.
Notre Dame Academy – WIkipedia

Notre Dame Academy at the 2018 RRS symposium

Our friends at the China Lake Museum also had a display to show the Navy’s contributions to rocketry and the national defense.
China Lake Museum

China Lake Museum on display at 2018 RRS symposium

U.S. Rockets was also exhibiting at the RRS symposium.
U.S. Rockets – Jerry Irvine

U.S. Rockets exhibiting at the RRS symposium

We had several speakers presenting on current and historical topics of professional and amateur rocketry including Jacky Calvignac of Northrop Grumman, our founder George James of his organization, The Rocket Research Institute (RRI), John Steinmeyer of Orbital-ATK and David Krause of NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia who called in by Skype.

George James, founder of the RRS, presents on behalf of the RRI

Jacky Calvignac shows the propulsion programs at Northrop Grumman

High School Rocket Propulsion Lab and new RRS members present their test firings from the RRS MTA

Aerospace Corporation’s presentation on additive manufactured propellant grains

We thank all of our attendees, presenters, exhibitors and just everyone who stopped in and had a good time with us. The RRS would like to especially thank Tony Richards for his photography taken at the RRS symposium.

The RRS will discuss at our next monthly meeting on May 11th if we’ll have another symposium next year in 2019. Based on the overwhelming response, this is very likely.

Lots of progress with RRS archiving and history

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We’ve had a lot of progress recently with archiving RRS newsletters and other publications. I’ve put up six more newsletters. I’ve posted three more newsletters I received from Osvaldo a while back and had backlogged to post. This includes issue Vol_54_4_Dec_1997.pdf which is the second half of the RRS’s summary of the history of liquid propellant work at our getting prednisone society.

RRS liquid rockets from the 1990’s

Three more editions of the early Astrojet newsletter where also posted in the newsletters section with the help of Dave Nordling who got Caltech’s JPL library to send us what digital copies they had of Astrojet. I suspect they may have more in their archives because it seems odd to have only three non-sequential issues, but we haven’t been able to locate them through their catalog. The RRS is thankful to the Caltech JPL library for retaining and helping us obtain a copy of these early works of the Glendale Rocket Society (former name of the RRS). We hope to work with them more in finding all we can on the RRS history.
getting ambien

RRS founder, George James, with his “Slim Jim” rocket

Dave Crisalli shared with us ten more articles and two videos. These reports and videos have been posted on the “Other RRS articles” tab of the RRS website.

Six of these articles are from High Power Rocketry Magazine and were authored by Dave. Also included was the most recent versions of David Elliot’s and Lee Rosenthal’s hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) monopropellant rocket report from the 1950’s.

Dave Crisalli’s package included a Scientific American magazine article from 1957 which includes mention of the RRS. This is on the “Articles about the RRS” tab of our website.

Also we have an improved version of Dave Crisalli’s 1976 liquid rocket report that has been updated with more pictures and drawings.

Dave also shared two fantastic videos. One is the video report on the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) monopropellant rocket that was filmed at the time of construction and test in the 1950’s with audio narration by David Elliot being added later by Dave Crisalli.

The second is a video report on Dave’s sounding rocket, a written report on the Rocket was also shared. This video also includes some liquid propellant work done at the time by other RRS members.

Dave Crisalli’s regeneratively cooled LOX-kerosene rocket firing

Both of these new videos can be seen on the RRS YouTube channel linked below. Please subscribe to our channel so you can be informed of updates as we make them. There will certainly be more to come!
RRS YouTube channel – ReactionResearchSoc

Frank Miuccio, our society VP, contributed a small collection that I’ve also posted to the “articles about the RRS” tab of the RRS website. This included six magazine articles and some news clippings.

Image from Popular Science article

Another item added to the other RRS articles section, brought to us by John Mariano and scanned by RRS secretary, Dave Nordling, is a short book on early micrograin rockets jointly from the Reaction Research Society (RRS) and the Pacific Rocket Society (PRS). The title is simply “Micrograin Rockets” and was written by B.J. Humphreys Jr with excellent illustrations and descriptions.

Micrograin rocket and an early hybrid design (B.J. Humphreys Jr.)

Dave Nordling is also working on scanning a second book from John Mariano’s personal library which should be available soon.

A lot more will be coming soon. Frank Miuccio managed to obtain a collection of RRS newsletters. They are issue numbers 59 through 100 and he has lent them to me to scan. This will double the number of newsletters we have archived!

In addition to that, Dave Nordling has gotten for us the RRS material that happened to be scanned and collected by the Google Books Library Project. This was five documents some with several Astrojet editions included. The collection totals 934 pages in all. Although some of the Astrojet newsletters are duplicates. The collection includes reprints of the first eight RRS newsletters from our founding in 1943! A truly impressive find which we hope to share soon.

All this new material will have to be scanned and parsed before being posted, which I hope to accomplish one at a time over the next few months. I’ll write a follow-up post once it’s all up on the RRS website.

More RRS newsletters

We strongly encourage our current and former membership to consider donating or just letting the RRS borrow articles, photos and reports for scanning and inclusion into the ever-expanding RRS archives. We hope to build a great story for the RRS history project coinciding with our upcoming 75th anniversary next year.

If there are any errors, clarifications, questions, suggestions or other things you’d like to add or donate to the RRS archives, contact me at research@rrs.org.

***

June 2017 meeting

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The monthly meeting of the RRS was held June 9, 2017, at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena. The meeting was called to order at 7:45pm.

The launch event with UCLA was successful. We accomplished a lot with many different groups present. Again, we thank Dave Crisalli for being our pyro-op for the event. The RRS discussed the event and how we could manage these events in a more orderly fashion.

Several steps for improvement were discussed including tighter control of incoming vehicles and setting our operating procedure into written form for publication. In the future, the RRS should require all attendees to the MTA send their indemnification forms well in advance of the event so we know how many people we are expecting. Also, we need to use a full 10 second count instead of the 5 second count which will allow more time for the spotter to stop the launch if a problem is detected. An earlier draft of the RRS operational safety codes exists and was approved. The RRS secretary will circulate a new draft to the executive council before the next meeting on July 14th.

Minor facility improvements were discussed including how to mitigate the stifling heat at our desert site. Frank was willing to buy a water-fed misting fan that might help some people inside the Dosa building or perhaps inside the bunker. If the device works well, the RRS may consider buying a second unit to help create a small cooling space for those who are most affected by the heat.

I sat in my truck’s air conditioning a few times that afternoon as wearing the fireproof suit for the micrograin loading operations only added to my mounting heat exhaustion. Dave Crisalli had mentioned there are vests that hold flat ice packs that can be worn inside of protective suits. This will buy some time to work more comfortably under hot conditions.

Hydration, sunscreen and proper clothing for the desert heat are always important to all individuals to protect themselves both before and during the events held at the RRS MTA. The Mojave Desert is a tough place. It’s this attention to these details that are key parts of everyone having a successful event. As we do operate year-round through the hot months, there will always be this hazard to manage.

We reviewed the video shot from the launches. It has been suspected that the existing micrograin launch rails are a little too short resulting in the rockets leaving less than straight from the rails. We discussed newer longer rail launchers. It was decided to try to recover an old rail system that is already at the MTA as a backup.

Frank brought several old paper copies of the RRS newsletters. Some of these date back to the early 1950’s and others were from the 1960’s. The RRS is actively working to electronically archive as much of these newsletters as part of our on-going RRS history project.

RRS News, Issues 104 and 103

RRS News, Issues 98 and 101

Issue 101 mentions a story where the RRS was on the old Louis Lomax show which was a local semi-weekly news program in Los Angeles from 1964-1968. John Mariano and George Dosa were there and we hope to someday find the archival footage and post this to our YouTube channel. (I think it was Issue 101? Someone correct me if I am mistaken.)
Louis Lomax – Wikipedia

The RRS has in fact set the date for the upcoming 75th anniversary symposium which will be April 14, 2018. We will have it at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center as before. We have already begun the process of contacting speakers and exhibitors. We hope to make this event even better than this last year.

John Mariano brought his rocket on a string. This is a classic demonstration of the fundamental principle of propulsion using a CO2 cartridge guided on a plastic clothesline. The rocket was easily able to traverse the full length of the Ken Nakaoka Community Center ballroom, even uphill to the stage where Larry was holding the stop. Bill and I took video of the event and its on the RRS YouTube channel. Link is below:

CO2 rocket on a string

YouTube channel – RRS

After some false starts in getting the spring loaded puncturing device to work, we got it to work. Simple, but very fun! This demonstration of the fundamental principle of jet propulsion is a favorite in our educational events.

John Mariano gets ready with his rocket on a string

pool noodle segment, nose cone, plastic guide rods, CO2 cartridge, clothesline

Rocket on a string, Larry catches on the stage

The RRS is looking forward to doing an educational event with the students of Nickerson Projects in Watts. After the teaching sessions, the launch event is scheduled for July 22nd. Larry has an RRS standard alpha for the demonstration. The RRS is grateful to the LAPD CSP program for helping put this together.

RRS standard alpha for the Watts program in July 2017

We adjourned the meeting at 9:10pm. Next meeting will be July 14, 2017, just before the launch event with Nickerson Projects in Watts that next Saturday, July 22nd.

If there is anything I missed or mistated, please let me know.
secretary@rrs.org