Vern Estes

Say "Estes Model Rockets" to men of a certain age and the effect is instant and infectious. Boys of the 60s and 70's built their paper and balsa rockets by the millions, launching them into the skies all across America. Uncountable careers in science and engineering were started thanks to model rocketry and at least one astronaut has come from the ranks of model rocketeers!

G. Harry Stine was a White Sands engineer with an interest in the budding amateur rocket movement of the 1950s. He was concerned because young boys were being blinded and maimed trying to build their own pipe rockets. (Think October Sky.) When shoe salesman and amateur chemist Orville Carlisle contacted him, after reading some of Stine's articles on rockets in Popular Mechanics, he told him of some black powder, throw-away rocket motors he'd been designing. Carlisle sent Stine a box of the motors and a couple of the Rock-a-chute rocket kits he'd been experimenting with. The beauty of Carlisle's innovation was that the motors were safe to store, premade and were tossed away after use. You just recovered your rocket, threw out the used motor, put in a fresh one, and launched again! Simple and safe.

Stine contacted some area boys and had them give it a shot. They blew through the whole box of motors in one afternoon, then clamored for more. Stine understood that he'd found his answer and got to work. He and Carlisle started Model Missiles, Inc. to sell Carlisle's kits and motors. Stine promoted them in Popular Mechanics and started to create and promulgate a set of safety rules. (Remember, he was an engineer.) Within a few years, they were selling hundreds of rockets and motors.

Carlisle couldn't keep up with the demand for his black powder engines, so Stine looked around for someone with fireworks experience who could start a factory. He found Vern Estes of Colorado. The rest, of course, is history.

Estes Industries became, and remains to this day, the number one model rocket company in the world. Tens of millions of kids (and now adults, too) have flown their kits. Rockets that Vern designed in the early Sixties are still being sold today: Alpha, Big Bertha, Mosquito. Vern has become a kind of father figure to the hobby, always modest and self-effacing, welcome at launches all around the world. And until age slowed him down (he's around 70 now), he attended a lot of launches, too.

Now comes word that he's seriously begun work on his autobiography and history of the hobby, "Dear Mr. Estes". He started the book about a decade ago, but seems now to really gotten serious about completing and publishing it. I know I'll get a copy.

A few fun rocket links:
Estes Industries: The backbone of the hobby. In comics terms, the DC to Centuri Engineering's Marvel.
National Association of Rocketry: Another of Harry Stine's legacies to the hobby. There has never been a serious injury or death due to model rocketry and the NAR can be thanked for that.
Tripoli Rocketry Asociation: Boys grow up.
Jim Z's: Estes and Centuri may not make them any more, but that doesn't mean you can't build 'em! A real nostalgia trip....
Rocketry Online: Links galore!
Mid-South Rocket Society: The local model rocketry club. Root around in the photos and you might find yours truly in there!