Safety and legality

[joshb]

This post is inspired by what Art said on his thread, but I didn't want to thread-jack him.

Do not do this inside the house unless you have a cool-touch type ceramic smooth top stove and a gaylord extinguisher hood like I HAVE. Otherwise, do it over an electric hot plate out-of doors and away from EVERYTHING. This is a comparatively very safe method of making this stuff, but at the end stage, you are dealing with oxidized propellant...DANGER. Wear layered cotton clothing when doing this, and wear NO PLASTIC. This means no polyester. You don't have to worry about heavy splatter etc... with this method, but be safe just for appearances sake if nothing else.

I just want to emphasize the safety aspect for all those out there who may want to try making their own motors. As Art says, the anytime you have mixed propellant (kno3 + sugar or any other variety of substances) it is highly flammable and you should consider what would happen if the entire lot of it ignited at any moment.

Even though Art says he prepared some stuff in his kitchen, I really have to say this is generally a very bad idea to make rocket fuel indoors. If at any point if even a small or medium sized batch ignites, it can potentially cause major damage to the kitchen or house. Think about the consequences of what may have to be repaired ($$$) and the damage to relationships with your family (spouse, parents, etc.) and landlord if you rent. Also consider that insurance may refuse to cover damages caused by this behavior!

This is an anecdote, but I'll paraphrase the story of someone who had this happen. About spring 2007 a man was preparing some rocket fuel (not sure if it was sugar based, think it was higher power stuff) in his garage. Regardless of his standard safety precautions, there was an accidental ignition and his garage and house were severely damaged and rendered uninhabitable. The fire department reported the cause was due to explosives (even rocket candy is legally a low explosive) and this caused a huge mess. His home owners insurance refused to pay for anything, his wife took his kids and left him, and he was charged by the ATF for several felonies, which led to him losing his government job.

(I apologize if this seems a little "urban legend" due to lack of details -- I just can't find the reference in mailing list archives at the moment. If pressed I can find it.)

This leads us to two more points:

1) Make sure you know what is legal and what is illegal. Sometimes all that is required to go from illegal to legal is a permit application. For the US, search for LEUP (low explosive users permit) and rocket.
2) Just because what you are doing is technically legal doesn't mean your life can't be ruined by it. If there is an accident, besides the practical matter of hurting yourself or burning down your house/garage/car, once someone figures out it was caused by an explosive (it'll be pretty obvious to investigators), government figures may try to convict numerous obscure laws. If you are on the edge of any of them, you could be in big trouble.

Just to show how easy it is to do something really stupid, watch this video:

Fortunately these kids were not hurt, but they damaged their dad's car. If they were outside it wouldn't have been as big of an issue. If they took basic safety precautions (don't light a sample near the main pot of fuel and don't use an open flame!) they wouldn't have had the problem.

I definitely don't mean to scare anyone away from doing this. Making rocket candy is one of the safer alternatives vs. APCP or black powder, but that doesn't mean it is completely safe. Accidents happen, so just be prepared for them.

Recommendations:

1) As an alternative to using your kitchen and all the downsides involved, just go to WalMart and buy a $30 electric skillet or griddle (Presto is a good brand for this) and do it outside. Anyone getting into this should be able to afford that, and it will let you do the experiments outside with much less risk.

2) Learn everything you can so you aren't caught by a simple thing like the kids in the video. Search for James Yawn's website, Richard Nakka's website, and find the SugPro mailing list and lurk for a while and read the archives. Those three sites have a lot of information.

3) Don't believe or try everything you see on YouTube. For example, if you've seen the barefoot kid using a power drill to make the nozzle and hole in his rocket motor, you may want to try a safer method.

Sorry for the long rant, but I wanted bring up this subject before anyone gets careless.
:speakcool:

 

[n0mad23]

And for goodness sake, if you find a used copy of High Low Boom DO NOT BUY IT! Best to turn and run the other way.

Adolescence is hard enough to make it through without blowing yourself up.

 

[reverend]

Lol... Those kids are IDIOTS! I've seen this before... I laughed pretty hard when I first saw this...

The two most expensive things someone will usually own in their lifetime is their house and their car. I figured out a while ago that it's generally always better to do these kinds of things far away from houses, and far away from cars.

 

[Art]

Another add-on here.
When you heat any components to create fuel...and I mean anything, have all the components fully mixed before adding any heat. With Candy Fuel, until the very last second of a 20+ minute session of stirring, the fuel is still too wet to burn very well. If you go adding anything to the pot while heating it, INCLUDING WATER, you could splash something out of the pan and ...well, make a mess.

Once again, never use any open flames....never use exposed heating elements. With a very expensive stove-top of EXACTLY the right kind that I can regulate the heat to stay under conductive ignition point (I tested this), a fancy extinguisher hood designed for grease fires, a stilt house made of all concrete (hurricane bunker stuff) and a perfect set of "cooking" equipment, I dare this. Otherwise, please DO go get an electric skillet or hotplate, and get either cotton protective gear or leather welding gear (NO PLASTIC GLOVES!!!).
You must be TOTALLY stupid to light this stuff off while cooking. You must be TOTALLY STUPID to also consider it to be 100 times more dangerous than it "really" is. It is easier to be safe and prepared than it is to improvise and try something like making rocket fuel with a propane torch. Many websites talk about using a gas grill as the heat source. That is plain idiocy.

 

[reverend]

I've definetely seen my fair share of stupid folks on youtube doing things that just make you say WHAT?

I dripped a very tiny drop of hot Rcandy ~250F on my pinky finger while pouring a grain once. It's sticky and doesn't come right off either and i couldn't drop the grain either without spilling it all so i had to endure the pain and ended up with a massive blister on my favorite typing finger. Gloves = good.

I've also noticed a bunch of folks that have inadequete footwear: ie... barefoot or sandals...

That's just cooking safety. I've seen some videos of poor safety when lighting some stuff. You can stand as far back as you want but, there is really no safe distance... a CATO that happened in my test area still landed shrapnel all around me and I was 100ft back with a remote ignitor... Don't ever stand too close

Don't ever use a FUSE. Fuses can burn irregularly, or faster than you expect. I've seen ignition occur even before a fuse burns down all the way (likely from a single ember jumping off early).

Here's another idiot video... Trying to launch a 5ft rocket made with uncooked rcandy (powdered) of course the 'core' he made collapsed and lead to an uncontrolled burn and nozzle clog... According to Darwin this kid should have gotten a peice of shrapnel thru his skull... And the worst part is that he's posting How-To videos on YT... yikes...

Please be safe, use common sense and follow the laws.

Speaking of Laws...

In order to launch a high powered rocket "In Public" like at a rocketry launch day, You need 2 things. An appropriate certification level from a nationally recognized rocketry organization (NAR or Tripoli). Unless you build your rocket and make your fuel on-site, you also need a LEUP.

The LEUP pertains to transportation and storage of the rocket fuel.

If you

Build and Mix the fuel on your property and
Fire the motor on your property, without
any storage in between

then you do not need a LEUP.

To take your rocket fuel / motor off of your property you need a LEUP.
To store your rocket fuel / motor on your property you need a LEUP.

To get a LEUP you need to have a qualified magazine for storage. A qualified magazine is basically a building that's on your property and atleast 50ft or 100ft away from any inhabited dwelling.

Most people cannot comply with this storage requirement so they cannot get a LEUP.

You can however find someone else that has a LEUP and a good magazine, and get them to sign off with the ATF for your LEUP. This means that you could build the motor on your property, and transport it to their magazine for storage, then retreive it on the day it's going to be fired.

There's a very long waiting list for LEUPs. I've heard most people say it takes 6 to 8 months from the time they first contact the ATF, til the time they actually send an investigator to your premises for inspection and to interview you. Your LEUP would be issued shortly thereafter.

I myself have not yet applied for a LEUP.

1) I build a fire my rockets on my own property
2) I do not 'store' my motors or fuel. I fire them as soon as their ready (I can't wait to see them )


I do keep my bulk raw materials inside in a dry room with a dehumidifier to keep them try (lost a whole 50lb box of KNO3 once due to moisture). But the unmixed chemicals are not considered explosives, and therefore are legal (and safe) to store indoors.

Regards,

 

[joshb]

The only exception to the LEUP rules is if the motor you have built is intended to have less than 62.5 grams of fuel (combination of all fuel grains, not individual grains).

Also you don't necessarily need a certification from NAR or TRA to launch a high powered rocket, you could do it on your own if you get permission of the property owner, but you're risking your butt if you do that.

 

[Art]

A word about fuses and ignitors:

I do not use most fues types. For tiny motor tests, sparklers DO work pretty nicely. I have never seen a sparkler suddenly fizz off. That said, it does not mean they are safe unless you MAKE them safe.
LOTS and LOTS of steely-eyed rocketmen have had their faces fragged off by electrical ignitors gone wrong. They are no safer than any fuse if proceedures are not followed. THe problem is, most folks are not what we might say experienced electricians. I find that folks who commonly work with DC electrical systems tend to do fewer stupid things, just because they have habits that keep them safe. Believe it or not, I do not include house electricians in this catagory. They tend to be absent-minded out of contept for DC systems.
The thing I am saying here is that before you EVER try an ignitor in a motor, waste a few doing practices. Tape them to a sparkler or something and practice setting them up and firing them in a sequence. Sometimes you MUST work on a rocket after the ignitor is inserted. That does not mean that you need to have the power source hooked up. That does not mean that you even need to have full-length leads to your ignitor hooked up. I use 5' leaders that I wire the system to.
I will post a schematic for my ignitor set-up here. I strongly recommend that you build your own. Not only can you get a higher quality system than most of the cheap model rocket systems available, but more importantly, you gain totaly familliarity with the guts of the system you are using.
I use a system with a normally open momentary switch on EACH LEG going to the ignitor as well as the keyed primary switch. This means I must hold down TWO SWITCHES to ignite the pyrogen. THere is also a buzzer incorporated into the primary key switch.

 

[ar81]

ALWAYS PLAY SAFE!!

When making Space Orbinomics and investigating about chemical reactions for waste processing I discovered that chemistry is like playing with legos. Chemical reactions are rearragement of lego pieces called atoms.

Unfortunately your body, your car, your house are also made of legos, so it is generally a bad idea to make any of them to be part of the reaction. Reactions are not selective. They will take any legos at hand. So it seems a bad idea to be part of a chemical reaction, for you could get hurt or die.

Those who start chemical reactions as if it was a lego game to experiment and create new stuff, ignore that chemical reactions do not care if you are the one starting the reaction or not. They do not care if you are safe or not. For a chemical reaction, your atoms are just another collection of legos that get involved in the game of lego-atom and lego-molecule rearrangement.

Safety precautions is about taking care to make sure that you or your assets are not involved in the reaction. Such involvement implies to be safe against pressure changes (shockwave of an explosion, decompression), temperature changes (burning or freezing) or poisoning (changing reactions of your body with byproducts of the external reaction or ingredients you are using).

Safety means: Do not let your lego-atoms be part of the chemical reaction, you do not want atoms of your body or your property to be part of a lego rearrangement.

 

[Sherrif of Nottingham]

I like Legos...

Um... If I was to say, have a 26 acre ranch, and I fired a rocket I have in that property, could somebody get mad at me? Also, for store bought rockets... yeah, model rockets... do you need one of those LEUP's?

I remember my dad used to get the model rockets, but seeing as I was always the youngest I was never allowed to fire them, or put in the engines:dry:, which really sucked because I was the only one that actually wanted to. My sister was... and still is afraid of any explosives:blink:, and my brother was too logical:huh: (he didn't understand why we were waisting the rockets to fire a small tube in the air just to watch it fall back down to the ground).

Also this topic should SO be stickied!

 

[Quick_Nick]

I managed to lose one rocket in a small ranch (make sure you have enough space!!!) in the woods that border the ranch. Another landed in a neighbor's ranch, near their house. (actually it's parachute didn't deploy, so it SMASHED into their ranch(just the ground, not a building)) I don't think there's anyone to get mad at you out in the country unless your rocket destroys something. Also, around here there might be some issues with burn bans but I don't think anyone would get upset about a rocket launching. (burn bans are mostly to stop people who burn garbage)
You should have plenty of space though. The ranch I launched from only had 6 acres of open space when taking into account the trees in the middle of the property. My smaller rocket (should have gone like 600 or 900 ft up), the one that went into the woods, went at least 150 yards.(that's to the edge of the woods) My larger rocket went probably 170 yards to reach the spot where it landed in the neighbor's property. I guess I'll stick to launching at JSC where they have something like 300 acres of space.

 

[James.Denholm]

You boys just don't get yourself blown'd up, ya hear?

 

[Sherrif of Nottingham]

Right, didn't think about the neighbor, but I guess I've never been a fan of neighbors. Hence the ranch, anyway my lot is actually not that wide, but it goes back a ways, my "Front Yard" is about a football field, which is supposed to be perfect for rocketry, or so I heard. The backyard is a forest, but the most I have to worry about is my house, my neighbor, and any longhorns that happen to be grazing.

@ James.Denholm: Why not? I was thinking of using napalm as a rocket fuel for my second stage.:rofl:

 

[RocketMan_Len]

Um... If I was to say, have a 26 acre ranch, and I fired a rocket I have in that property, could somebody get mad at me? Also, for store bought rockets... yeah, model rockets... do you need one of those LEUP's?

As long as your ranch is a good distance away from an airport, you ought not to have any problems. The organizations I belong to, however, feel it's good manners to inform local Air Traffic authorities if you're going to be flying anything larger than the store-bought rockets that only reach a thousand feet or so...

LEUPs are only required if you exceed the 62.5-gram 'limit' for hobby motors. There's a lot of legal wrangling going on about this... so I may be mistaken now.

my brother was too logical:huh: (he didn't understand why we were waisting the rockets to fire a small tube in the air just to watch it fall back down to the ground).

I can't help about your sister... because people see rockets as explosives - even though they're not. You can always tell your brother that this is a GREAT way to learn physics. If you keep at it, you'll find out things about chemistry, structural engineering, aerodynamics, electronics - just about any topic you can think of. (I've got a couple of photography/videography projects going...)

 

[Sherrif of Nottingham]

The rockets with my dad were years ago... now my brother's trying to be an engineer, lolz... And my sister (now 22) is still afraid of anything related to fire.

However, I really don't think there is an airport close to my ranch, and the 62.5 gram limit is probably not gonna be exceeded unless I'm trying to launch something into orbit. Also, because of the way our land is I know some of our neighbors have some explosives to clear the rocks, so I think somebody shooting off a rocket is not that hardcore... at least where I live.


Thanks for the help everybody.

 

[Master of Blades]

Dear lord... Perhaps i should lay off playing with Molotov Cocktails then... @w@

 

[reverend]

a 26 acre ranch sounds like a dream to me... plenty of space to launch a high powered rocket even... When you build and launch them on your own property you do not need a LEUP or any sort of HPR certification. You do need to contact your local air traffic control tower to find out what type of airspace you live under. Chances are you won't be inside Class B or C airspace which is heavily regulated down to 2000'. If you're inside a Class B or C you cannot exceed 2000 ft without clearance from ATC. If you're not inside a Class B or C, then you can go up to 18,000ft before you need a clearance, if I'm not mistaken... Over 18,000ft is all class A airspace and is also heavily controlled no matter where you are. Over 60,000ft and you'll also need clearance from the military...... yea right....

Anyways, 26 acres sounds like plenty of space. Don't shoot your rocket straight up. Point it towards the back of your property at about an 80 degree angle. This should ensure that even if you have only a moderately straight flight, your home, and your neighbors shouldn't be in danger. Rockets can go anywhere though, so launch a safe distance from houses anyways.

Since you've indicated you don't expect to exceed 62.5 grams of fuel, i'd say any rockets you plan to launch are safe, and no clearances from ATC would be needed at all.

Fire away!

 

[steph]

Over 60,000ft and you'll also need clearance from the military...... yea right....

So you need clearance from the military to send it to space. Nasty.
BTw...does anyone here know of any model rocket flight that actually went over 60.000 ft?

 

[RocketMan_Len]

So you need clearance from the military to send it to space. Nasty.
BTw...does anyone here know of any model rocket flight that actually went over 60.000 ft?

*Model* rockets - no. But there have been a couple of AMATEUR rockets that have exceeded 300,000 feet. There are also a few clubs in the Nevada/Arizona area whose members have built rockets that reach 30,000-40,000 feet.

 

[Tachyon]

after watching some of those vids - all I've got to say is "natural selection"

 

[Nerull]

a 26 acre ranch sounds like a dream to me... plenty of space to launch a high powered rocket even... When you build and launch them on your own property you do not need a LEUP or any sort of HPR certification. You do need to contact your local air traffic control tower to find out what type of airspace you live under. Chances are you won't be inside Class B or C airspace which is heavily regulated down to 2000'. If you're inside a Class B or C you cannot exceed 2000 ft without clearance from ATC. If you're not inside a Class B or C, then you can go up to 18,000ft before you need a clearance, if I'm not mistaken... Over 18,000ft is all class A airspace and is also heavily controlled no matter where you are. Over 60,000ft and you'll also need clearance from the military...... yea right....

Err, no. The FAA still controls class E. Class G is uncontrolled, and its altitude depends on your location. It's usually 1200 ft. It can be significantly higher in remote areas or lower near airports.

Class B and C are rather more complicated than that as well.

If operating a rocket with a on-the-pad weight of over 1 pound in any airspace but class G you are required to notify the FAA, usually by calling the nearest tower. This is a notification, not a request. They cannot tell you no unless you are in airport airspace.

If you are operating a rocket with an no-the-pad weight of over 1500 grams in any airspace but class G, you require a waiver of FAR101, which is best to request at least a month in advance. These can be denied, but they usually don't. Sometimes airport managers can get in the way, but if you are far from one they don't really matter.

AeroPac regulary gets 100000ft waivers out at Black Rock, so I suspect the 60000ft thing is wrong as well.