The New Space Race : Local inventors hope to be the first amateurs to reach space, challenging major aerospace companies with garage- built rockets that cost $10,000 or less. : NEXT L.A.: A look at issues, people and ideas helping to shape the emerging metropolis.

In the trunk of Charles Pooley’s 1979 Oldsmobile are old phone books, coils of wire, a broken umbrella and the two foot long engine of a rocket the Pacific Rocket Society is hoping to launch into space. The society’s members call it the Amspace Spacefarer X-80, standing for their ambition to propel the rocket higher than any amateur has before; 80 kilometers (or 50 miles) above the Earth.

The Spacefarer X-80 is the first entrant in an amateur space race now going on in machine shops and garages across America--and as far away as Australia. Unlike the cold war space race, this one is being fought on the cheap.

“We’re doing for $10,000 what NASA does for ten times as much,� says George Morgan past president of the Los Angeles based Pacific Rocket Society.

With the Southern California based aerospace industry reeling, and rocket enthusiasts everywhere losing hope of seeing space through the efforts of the government, the Pacific Rocket Society and other local rocket enthusiasts are dreaming of fomenting a cottage industry based in the Los Angeles suburbs of small-scale, economically built commercial rockets.

To them it’s a simple issue. “If you want to reach space, build rockets,�Pooley says.

Built out of agricultural irrigation pipe, plumbing valves and consumer electronics, the Spacefarer X-80 stands 23 feet tall and weighs in at a cost of under $3 a pound in materials. With the design finalized the PRS says it could be duplicated for as little as $600 a rocket. The $10,000 seed money for the Spacefarer X-80 was provided by Margaret Jordan, vice president of the National Space Society, to prove a point: that a non-defense contractor, a weekend rocketeer, could reach space cheaply. “We want to spur a low cost approach, an everyman’s rocket if you will,� says Jordan.

The grant, and the initial success of the Spacefarer X-80, got the amateur rocket community thinking big. “That lit a fire under us for sure,� said Pooley, a member of the Pacific Rocket Society.

As word of the society’s project spread through the far- flung amateur rocket community- Pooley says he’s received calls from as far away as Australia-other groups started to talk about trying to build a space rocket. And with a wealthy Florida rocket enthusiast said to be close to funding a $100,000 prize for the first amateur group to put a rocket in space, activity is kicking into high gear.

At least four other rockets are being built in the Los Angeles area. Groups in Northern California Alabama, Miami, England, and Australia are also hard at work.

“The goal is to get as many grassroots organizations building rockets as possible,� said Korey Kline, who did early work on the Spacefarer X-80 and is involved now in a commercial startup company in Florida.

“It’s one of the last few frontiers,� Kline said. “If you ask me what can the guy on the street jump into nowadays and make a significant contribution, I say its rockets.�

What happens next could have implications for the commerical development of space, what kids do in high school science class, and the future of rocketry in Los Angeles. Southern California has been the capital of the defense-funded rocket business, playing host to most of the major companies that built the U.S. space program. In their midst the core of the nation’s amateur rocketry community grew up.

“Everything you need to build a starship is within 50 miles of us here, as far as aerospace machine shops, surplus yards and computer equipment,� says Paul McQuown, a member of the San Gabriel Valley amateur group Independent Rocket Systems.

Local rocket groups is a crazy quilt mix of students, retirees, dreamers eking out a living at part-time jobs to support their rocket work, and a healthy number of aerospace professionals eager to get their hands dirty after a day of shuffling papers.

In amateur rocketry the line seperating fact from science fiction dreams can be hazy. One member of the Pacific Rocket Society is a television producer who hopes to film infomercials “if and when� the group gets close to building a vehicle that could transport people into space. Production crew from the science fiction TV show “Babylon 5� have come out to watch launches of smaller rockets in the Mojave desert.

The amateurs, however, have a down-to-earth grasp of economics and the problems with government funded space programs. They complain of expensive cold war technology developed in a “cost is no object� environment, of a professional rocket industry sheltered from the free market, demanding outrageous prices to keep thousands of needless employees employed.

With the government cutting back funding of space programs, the amateurs say there is a need for homegrown private space enterprise.

“Homegrown means you forget NASA ever existed,� Pooley said. “You use cheap materials, you use techniques and processes that are rougher maybe sloppier but probably still reliable, and build it from scratch.�

Fuel tanks on the Spacefarer X-80 are fabricated from lightweight aluminum irrigation pipes mass-produced for farms. Valves are from the local hardware store. The fuel is liquid oxygen and watered down denatured alcohol.

Pooley, an electrical engineer, has been working part-time to give as much time as possible to the rocket. Robert Matevossian dropped out of Cal Poly POMONA for two quarters to work on the rocket. Working out of his parents’ garage in North Hollywood and in a machine shop at Cal Poly, they finished their propulsion system. On June 11 they completed a full duration burn of the rocket at their desert test site northeast of Mojave in Kern County.

Clamped to a stand, the engine fired for 52 seconds producing a constant 2,000 pounds of thrust. It was believed to be the largest test-firing ever by an amateur.

The amateur rocketeers hope to complete assembly of the remaining parts of the rocket and launch into space within the next 4 months from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Their Mojave site is too close to commercial air traffic for the FAA’s comfort.

Many of those working towards breaking the 80-kilometer barrier hope to drum up investments for more serious business ventures. Amateur rocketeers speak of producing cheap “sounding rockets� used for instantaneous sampling of weather conditions, of putting up small 1 or 2 pound satellites or enabling small kitschy industries like burial in space.

A bigger hope is to horn in on the satellite launch business currently dominated by aerospace giants like McDonell Douglas. Currently three private ventures--including one backed by computer software mogul Bill Gates--are planning global communications systems that will require putting almost 1,200 satellites into low earth orbit in the next few years.

But how real are the commercial possibilities for amateur space launches? Asides from satellites the rocketeers aren’t too sure.

“I don’t know anybody who needs to have their next day air letters rocketed around the world at 25,000 mph to the other end of the planet--do you?� McQuown said.

Still McQuown and the other amateurs are too drawn by the possibilities to let that stop them. “If you can get into space for $10,000, what can you do for $100,000?� asks Kline. “What can you really do with a million?�

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The Sky’s the Limit Members of the Pacific Rocket Society are among the leaders in a race to become the first amateurs to reach space, hoping to propel a rocket built of inexpensive, commonly available materials higher than 50 miles (or 80 kilometers) above the Earth.

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Spacefarer X-80

Success of the Spacefarer X-80 could bring a cottage industry of small-scale, garage-built commercial rockets that would horn in on the satellite-launch business.

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Building the Rockets on the Cheap

Some of the materials used to build the rocket:

Lightweight aluminum pipes mass-produced for agricultural irrigation, are used as propellant tanks.

Plumbing valves from a local hardware store.

Fuel consists of inexpensive liquid oxygen and denatured alchol watered down to 150 proof.

A flight-stabilizing gyroscope of the type used in model helicoptors. A small video camera in the rocket’s nose.

A global positioning system that cost the rocket designers $1,500 but which they say can be built for $400 or less. Fiberglass cloth of the type used to make surfboards is laid over stryrofoam for nose cone.

Steel and copper pipe for engine available at $3.30 a foot and $11 a foot respectively.

Parachutes from surplus parachute store.

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The Flight Plan

1. Rocket is launched within the next four months from a 50-foot tower in the desolate Black Rock desert north of Reno, Nev. 2. Initial thrust of 2,000 pounds, roughly three times the rocket’s weight, keeps it from tipping over and allows tail fins to bite into the air for stability.

3. About 19 miles up, the engine runs out of fuel. But low atmospheric density allows rocket to coast upward to at least 50 miles.

4. Signals from GPS satellites provide Rocket Society members with the rocket’s trajectory and flight- path information.

5. During descent, the fins open into a pair of panels that act as air brakes. AT 30,000 feet (5.7 miles), a small chute is released, followed by a larger one.

6. Parachutes slow rocket allowing it to be retrieved intact. On- board radio transmitters direct society members to desert landing site. Source: Los Angeles Times