Wow! It’s been a while since my last post, so I feel obligated to provide some sort of explanation. It’s been a busy start to the new year. My wife and I had our first baby, Ava, near the end of January, and there was a tremendous amount do in preparation for her winter arrival. And of course there’s been even more to do ever since she joined us nearly four weeks ago! As you might expect, the past month has been a complete blur. We’re a bit overwhelmed but are managing to adapt to life with a newborn. We’re extremely fortunate that everything went well, and we have a happy and healthy baby.
Welcome Ava!
Improbable Ventures is meant to be primarily about rockets, from theoretical rocket science to my practical misadventures in high power rocketry (much more to come on this topic soon). But it is also meant to be broader, encompassing related projects and ventures, and it’s impossible to completely separate it from my own personal life as well – which is why you might see me writing the occasional article about a class I’m taking, or a recent trip or hike I took, or a new baby.
As a sleep-deprived new father, I’m not sure that I have anything particularly profound to say about parenthood that hasn’t been said much more eloquently by other people, many times before. It’s exciting and exhausting. I thought it would be a lot of work, but it turned out to be more than I’d imagined. It’s not particularly complicated; it’s just that virtually nonstop, around the clock care is required.
More interesting than any perspective I can provide is the baby’s point of view. What a dramatic difference to go from being in the womb – totally dark, almost like a sensory deprivation chamber except for hearing mom’s heartbeat and her voice on a regular basis – to suddenly (unwillingly) being born. It must be total sensory overload, except you have no words for anything, no way to describe your experience even within your own mind, and no way to understand anything that’s happening or what might come next. The baby has never had to use her lungs and breathe on her own before, or feel hunger, do things like drink and swallow milk, and suddenly she is forced to figure all of this out – and fast.
While it’s true that babies basically just eat, sleep, and cry (there’s no shortage of crying) all day and all night, it’s remarkable that they learn as rapidly as they do!
A little over one year ago, I came across a question on Quora (an internet forum) about whether it would be legal to build and launch your own rocket into orbit.
Looking through the rearview mirror
I’d always been interested in rockets and space, but I never seriously considered doing this or even realized it was possible, or legal. How realistic is this kind of project? Do you need anyone’s permission, i.e. the FAA? The US government?
One month and an uncountably high number of Google searches later, I was actively exploring the possibilities.
Near the end of 2019 (before we had any idea what kind of year 2020 would be), I set a few rocketry-related goals for myself. I was just realizing that anyone can build and launch real, working model rockets. And they could build and launch big ones, too – high power rockets. I decided to try it out, first building a few smaller low power rockets and sending them up with a small launch pad, and then building my first high power rocket. Somewhat unexpectedly, one of the bigger obstacles I ran into wasn’t the construction of the rockets, but finding a suitable launch site. But I found a few places and had some initial successes. I set some concrete goals going into the new year.
My 2020 goals included the following:
build and successfully launch my first high power rocket;
get my NAR HPR level 1 certification (H or I motor);
get my level 2 certification (J, K, or L motor);
build my first electronics bay, learn more about flight computers, and use dual deploy for parachutes;
get my amateur (“ham”) radio license;
renovate my backyard garden shed and build a practical workshop, primarily for rocket projects;
get my level 3 certification (M, N, or O motor); and
build a two-stage rocket.
Overall, things went pretty well. I didn’t achieve everything on the list, but I did accomplish many of these things and got some high power rocketry experience under my belt – basically everything except the L3 cert and the two stage rocket. And I did actually build my L3 rocket (three separate times!) but had two flight certification attempts that were not successful, so I came close but didn’t quite pull it off. In general, I did a lot of stuff I’d never done before, and learned a tremendous amount along the way.
In short, I had a blast!
The future plans
Turning to 2021, it’s a new year and time to set some new goals. The logical starting point is with the goals I didn’t quite get to finish in 2020. Was I too ambitious? Crazy? Did I just run out of time? Who knows?
Since I already rebuilt my L3 rocket for the third time and it’s ready to fly, my first goal is getting my L3 certification. This will let me fly M, N, and O motors (and there are some even bigger ones beyond that, but first things first). There are no additional certification levels, though, after L3.
Next, I intend to build a two stage rocket. It can be fairly simple and inexpensive – no need to start off with something overly complex right off the bat – but I want to get a solid understanding of staging, and specifically staging using electronics (multiple flight computers). There are a couple important “events” with a two stage rocket, but basically the first stage (booster) ignites on the ground and “boosts” it high into the air, and then the second stage (sustainer) ignites mid-air. The first stage also breaks off and falls back to the ground at this point, reducing total weight and drag so the sustainer can fly much higher on its own. I’ll have much more to say about this two stage project once I dive in.
After that, I’d like to start on a more ambitious two stage project – something made of fiberglass, minimum diameter, and more sophisticated. Ideally I might be able to build a two stage rocket using one M and one N motor that can hit 100,000 ft, but more likely it would be a high altitude rocket that goes a few tens of thousands of feet into the air. I’ll see what’s realistic as I get closer to this goal.
In the meantime, I’m also taking some more math and science classes in 2021. Right now I’m enrolled in a chemistry course as well as a geology course dedicated to dinosaurs. The latter is entirely just for fun and has nothing to do with rocketry, but it isn’t extremely time consuming or demanding either. Chemistry is much more intense, but it’s also much more critical to rocketry, especially if I want to eventually build my own solid fuel motors or get into liquid fuel or something down the road.
I recently finished reading an excellent biography about Wernher von Braun. While browsing a used bookstore in Victoria, BC last year, I picked this book up on a whim. I really didn’t know anything at all about the man or his life, prior to this. In retrospect, I cannot believe I didn’t know anything, and I have to say I’m absolutely floored.
The book is Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, by Michael J. Neufeld.
Werner von Braun, the German-born American rocket engineer, with model rockets
The title really does a great job of summarizing the theme of the book. Von Braun’s life was in many ways a dichotomy between, on the one hand, his lofty intentions, a fascination with rockets and plans to use them for spaceflight and travel to the moon and distant worlds, and on the other hand, the darker side of his achievements, which were the creation of a weapon of immense destruction and war.
Pre-1945: German background and the Nazi regime
Von Braun straddled two worlds in many different ways, both literally and metaphorically. He was born and raised in Germany, received an education as an engineer and became an extremely effective and capable leader in engineering management – that is, leading large, complex engineering projects and organizations involving hundreds or even thousands of people.
As the Nazi regime came to power, von Braun was gradually pulled into its orbit (or intentionally gravitated towards it, depending on your view). He saw that the military and government were a powerful source of funding for the research and development of rockets, and von Braun seized the opportunity.
At Peenemunde, he developed rockets for the Nazi regime, including the infamous V-2, the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The Germans used the V-2 during World War II to attack Allied cities, as retribution for Allied bombings of German cities (thus the German name for the rocket, Vergeltungswaffe 2, meaning “Retribution Weapon 2”). The V-2 was also the first rocket to travel outside the earth’s atmosphere into space. The rocket von Braun brought to fruition was therefore used to bring destruction during the war, but also for pioneering spaceflight, a familiar duality in von Braun’s life.
Von Braun joined the Nazi party and even met Hitler on several occasions. He rose in the party’s ranks and became an SS officer. And yet he never seemed particularly enthusiastic or dedicated to the Nazi ideology or cause. It was clear that his only passion was rocketry, and the Nazi regime was willing to pour vast amounts of money into his organization at Peenemunde. At the same time, he never seems to have strongly objected to what the Nazis were doing, although he likely wasn’t aware of the full horrors of the Holocaust at that time. Years (and decades) after the war ended, von Braun condemned the regime, but of course that was much easier to do in retrospect and seems opportunistic.
William Pickering, James Van Allen and Wernher Von Braun hold a model of Explorer 1 in triumph after the successful launch of a US satellite
Post-1945: Spaceflight program leadership in the United States
After World War II ended in 1945, von Braun emigrated to the United States, one of several dozen scientists brought over as part of “Operation Paperclip.” He settled with his wife in Huntsville, Alabama, and with many other German workers as part of his organization. Von Braun lived in Huntsville for the next twenty years, raising a family there, and working for the US Army. He played a lead role in developing the Redstone rocket, which was used for the first live nuclear ballistic missile tests for the US, as well as the Jupiter-C rocket, which launched the first US satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958 (although this was not the world’s first satellite, which was the USSR’s Sputnik 1, in 1957).
Von Braun may have been opportunistic, but he thoroughly embraced his new American identity and believed that the US should lead the “free world” in the space race against the Soviet Union.
He later joined the newly created NASA in 1960 and played a major role in historic NASA projects, including the Mercury Redstone, Gemini, and Apollo programs. He was dedicated to the success of the Apollo program, and under his leadership, Apollo had a flawless track record for safety and success. The Apollo 11 lunar landing – the achievement of seeing humans actually set foot on the moon in 1969 – was probably the highlight of his life.
von Braun standing in front of the engines of the Saturn V
This is of course only a summary of von Braun’s life, and in this summary I am doing him an enormous disservice. Beyond his engineering, technical, and management genius, von Braun also increasingly became a popular household name as he began appearing in Walt Disney-produced documentaries in the 1950s about the future of spaceflight, and man in space. These documentaries themselves are fascinating, in retrospect, and are the subject of an entire separate post I plan to write.
A controversial legacy
Von Braun was a lifelong spaceflight enthusiast and strongly advocated for putting humans into space and going to the moon. It is safe to say that he is one of the most important individuals of the twentieth century: he basically led the development of the liquid fuel rocket into a mature technology, and he was directly responsible for the success of NASA’s Apollo program, among other accomplishments. And yet his rockets also have the legacy of destruction. He is ultimately responsible for the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and the dangerous cloud of nuclear war that hung over the entire world for the latter half of the twentieth century, and continues to hang over us to this day.
Intriguingly, this is a man who was an SS officer in the Nazi party and built weapons for Adolf Hitler, and yet also joined the US government and obtained security clearances, rose in its ranks, and personally met with multiple presidents including Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.
I highly recommend this book for a thoughtful, balanced study of von Braun’s life in much more fascinating detail.
Improbable Ventures 