Category Archives: Presenting

Rockets in the Projects

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by Larry Hoffing, Educational Outreach Coordinator, Reaction Research Society

On a dusty, old blackboard at the Jordan Downs Community Center, it had a chalk tray but no chalk. I don’t think it had been used since the whiteboard had come of age. Juan, our local Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Community Safety Partnership (CSP) officer, saw my predicament, disappeared into his police sports utility vehicle and returned with a piece of white chalk he “outlined bodies with on the sidewalk.” He has a wry sense of humor and not without reason. These officers are sometimes called out to respond to a nearby situation on the street. Peace and war are very close neighbors in this part of town.

CSP arose in 2011 out of a program in the city of Los Angeles founded by Connie Rice, a civil rights leader, and the Urban Peace Institute. The idea was to pair the Los Angeles Housing Authority with the LAPD in an effort to improve relations with citizens in the public housing projects of Jordan Downs, Nickerson Gardens, Imperial Courts and Ramona Gardens. The Watts Bears youth football program is just one outgrowth of this program focusing on improving the quality of life and supporting the community.  Spending time with kids and financial investment pays off in the long term in lifetime earnings and with higher graduation percentages.

I’ve been teaching rocketry since the early 1970’s when model rockets (and more particularly the model rocket motors) became legal in California. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) instituted a summer playground Youth Services program that I spearheaded- federal monies helped to expand it city-wide.  The Los Angeles Fire Department, following a demonstration flight, permitted some of the city’s first launch sites at Pierce and Valley community colleges. In 2017, the LAPD came to my organization, the Reaction Research Society (RRS), to pitch the idea to start a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) program that would come to be called “Rockets In The Projects.” The idea was simple — reach out to at risk students with grand ideas about reaching for the stars and a practical series of learning experiences to help show them the way.

Founded in 1943 in Glendale, California, RRS is the oldest continuously operating amateur rocket organization in the United States. The organization pre-dates NASA by 15 years. Some of our early members went on to help launch the space race. We are uniquely positioned to partner with the LAPD to bring space flight and rocketry to south Los Angeles youth with our organization having an FAA-approved launch site north of Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert and licensed pyrotechnic operators.

Our founder, George James, presents at the 2018 RRS symposium last year.

In this program, after learning the basic laws of motion, some chemistry and the principles of propulsion and aerodynamics, we build and fly experimental rockets. It’s the first time most students, mainly from 4th to 6th grade, hold an Allen (hex) wrench, use fasteners (button head machine screws) and assemble parts with O-rings. (The O-rings on the Challenger didn’t get tested properly, it’s a simple but critical part). They learn about reducers, payload sections, and an ogive nose cone and what’s best suited for subsonic  vs. supersonic flights (the answer: it depends).

This is an equal opportunity team building program using the “A” for Art in STEAM. Each team makes it unique by painting the outside surfaces. Unicorns, polka dots, and stars are popular rocket paint schemes alongside video game and rock group names. 

5 of the 6 alphas sit in the rack; Osvaldo’s alpha with a parachute sits to the left.

These micrograin rockets develop around 300 pounds of thrust, leaving the launch rail in a fraction of a second and travel over a mile at velocities approaching the speed of sound. UCLA, USC, Cal Poly Pomona and other universities’ rocket labs test their latest designs at our site. It’s the real deal.

A fish-eyed lens view of an RRS standard alpha streaking up into the blue Mojave sky. This is our standard teaching tool on the raw power of a rocket.

This program is a chance for many students, most of whom have never been to the California desert, to reach beyond their four square city blocks. We introduce them to desert safety, launch protocols, and some of the local flora and fauna. There is a cool white rock found in the desert, also called “fire rock”, that is a type of quartz, that when struck together, creates sparks. 

Live demonstration of micrograin propellant at the MTA

We demonstrate the burning of various rocket fuels, including one used in the Space Shuttle, similar to a hard rubber eraser. A parent might ask, “What is the difference in fuels?” A really good question: gasoline is fine for getting around in a car, but it doesn’t have the “oomph” needed to escape the bonds of the Earth at about 25,000 miles per hour.

I drink from a bottle of water and say, “This rocket fuel tastes great!”. I ask for a show of hands and two believers raise theirs, hesitantly, agreeing that I’ve just drunk rocket fuel. “Don’t believe me?” I say. “Apply electric current to water (but do not try this at home!) and you can break off the hydrogen from the oxygen by a process called hydrolysis.” I clearly remember the day this experiment was run in my Van Nuys High School science class almost 50 years ago. 

Liquefied hydrogen is a fuel of choice for space exploration, along with liquid oxygen. If you are going to explore space, you need to bring an oxidizer with the fuel as there is neither above the boundary of space at the von Karman line (the boundary between the earth’s atmosphere and space, estimated at from 50 to 62 miles above sea level by various agencies).

Orientation for the launch event at the George Dosa building at the RRS MTA, 2019-09-21

There is no doubt that these rocketeers with the CSP program will remember “launch day” for a long time. One student was so overcome, he told us this was the best thing that had happened in his life. These young students are at an age when some day in the future they might not only be able to buy a ticket for interplanetary trips with the stars beckoning, but make it happen. Pressing a red launch button is life changing. Part of it has to do with the spirit of flight, the satisfaction of teamwork and building something yourself, something comes to life the moment the red button is pushed.

The RRS encourages the sciences and engineering, but it doesn’t really matter what career path they choose. The students accomplish something amazing in our program. We are proud of the work we do with the community and LAPD and we will have more classes to come.

The students of Boyle Heights with the officers of LAPD CSP and the RRS pose for a group photo at the RRS MTA, 2019-09-21

EDITOR’S NOTE: Larry Hoffing is the Educational Outreach Coordinator for the Reaction Research Society (RRS.ORG), a 501(c)3 educational non-profit organization. He started flying rockets in junior high in the 1960’s. He is also a licensed rockets pyrotechnic operator in the state of California.

Contact Larry Hoffing at “events@rrs.org”

A Tribute to Mr. George Dosa

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by David Crisalli, Reaction Research Society

Some time in October of 1966, I had hitched a ride and gone down to an RRS meeting in Gardena. I was 13 and still in the 8th grade. At that meeting, I met Mr. Dosa for the first time. I met several other RRS members that evening, but Mr. Dosa was the most memorable. He was warmly welcoming, very enthusiastic about rocketry as a field of study, and also excited about having new students like me join the Society. 

As I attended more meetings and began to get involved in designing and building rockets, Mr. Dosa was always ready to offer help of all kinds from the loan of technical documents to the manufacturing of parts on the lathe and other tools he had in his garage. I spent many an enjoyable hour with him making steel nozzles, aluminum adapters, and fiberglass nose cones.

At one particular meeting in 1967, Mr. Richard Butterfield showed a 16 mm film of a hydrogen peroxide liquid mono-propellant rocket built and launched by RRS members David Elliot and Lee Rosenthal some 15 years before. I was completely captivated as I watched the two high school students in the film machine parts, fabricate sheet metal components, static test a liquid rocket motor in Mint Canyon, and then successfully launch the rocket in the Mojave Desert. Mr. Dosa saw my interest and enthusiasm and talked to me at some length about liquid rockets after the film. Then he asked if I would like to see the one he was working on. I jumped at the chance. 

The RRS meetings in those years were held in an old, small, wooden building on an isolated piece of property owned by a division of Pratt & Whitney in Gardena. It was really a shed but the RRS had been given permission to hold its monthly evening meetings there and store some of its equipment there. On the same piece of property, some 50 or so feet away, was a slightly larger wooden structure. Although larger, it was more of an empty garage and was not as suitable for meetings as the smaller building. When I told Mr. Dosa I would love to see the liquid rocket he was working on, he led me out of the meeting building and across the dark space between the buildings. It was probable nearly 10 PM by this time and there were no lights in the areas around either building. 

As Mr. Dosa opened the door into the very dark second building, he told me to wait there until he could turn on the light. “The light” was a single low wattage bulb hanging on a wire from the high ceiling. When the light came on, even in that dim glow from a single bulb, what I saw took my breath away. There, lying horizontally on a plywood table, was a bi-propellant liquid fueled rocket with the upper half of the skin removed. All of the tanks, plumbing, bulkheads, stringers, and longerons were precisely made and beautifully assembled. The rocket was more than 15 feet long and about eight inches in diameter. It was designed, Mr. Dosa explained, to run on 90% hydrogen peroxide and ethyl alcohol. I marveled as each piece of the structure and propellant plumbing was explained to me. The design was also unique in that Mr. Dosa had made the fuselage octagonal rather than round. This left him “corners” inside the rocket skin that he had used to run plumbing and wiring. The beautifully made fiberglass nose cone and boat tail were both round and the structure smoothly transitioned from octagonal to round at both ends. Mr. Dosa, a master at many fabrication techniques, had fashioned incredibly precise sheet aluminum sections that perfectly mated with the octagonal structure on one end and the perfectly round nose and boat tail on the other.

I could have stayed and talked to Mr. Dosa for hours, but it was very late now and my ride was leaving. Needless to say, I was completely stunned by what I had seen that evening and over the next several months and years, I must have made quite a pest of myself often keeping Mr. Dosa on the phone for long periods asking questions and listening to his patient explanations. From our first meeting in 1966 until I left for the Naval Academy in 1972, I met and worked with Mr. Dosa at RRS meetings and at rocket firings in the desert many, many times. Each and every time, it was a great joy to see him, talk to him, and learn from him. 

When I left for the Navy in the summer of 1972, “George” as he now had me call him, told me that he had been in the U.S. Navy during World War 2. He had met his lovely wife, Ann, overseas and brought her back home after the war. He wished me the best of luck in the Navy and asked me to stop by and see him whenever I got back to southern California.

After being gone for 18 years, I did find my way back to an RRS meeting and renewed my old acquaintance with George. In the intervening almost two decades, he had changed very little and was still as welcoming, enthusiastic, and as patient an instructor as ever. In the early 1990’s, I volunteered to restart publication of the long dormant RRS News. George was more than a little excited as he was always a huge proponent of documenting all of the projects that RRS members undertook. We began a very enjoyable and several year collaboration writing, editing, and publishing the RRS News more or less, once a quarter. 

During that same time frame, a few members of the RRS and I had started teaching a solid propellant class. As part of that class, several of us had written a course handbook. At the beginning of that course book, Niels Anderson and I had written a dedication to George because of his long, tireless mentoring of so many students and RRS members over the years. I include it here because I believe it captures the essence of who George was within the Society…

“Since the days of Dr. Robert Goddard, the United States has always had its share of rocket enthusiasts and experimentalists. In 1943, even before the end of the Second World War, the young students who founded the Reaction Research Society were hard at work experimenting with propulsion systems. As the “Space Age” dawned, the imaginations of millions were fired with the possibility of flight beyond the atmosphere of Earth. But to members of the many amateur rocketry groups forming during those days, flights of the imagination were not enough. Those with the interest, drive, and courage to try, designed and built fantastic rockets that exploded out of their launch towers on towering pillars of fire and smoke. These were not cardboard models with minuscule motors producing ounces of thrust. These were thundering metal machines, many feet long, producing thousands of pounds of thrust, and flying into the clear desert skies at unbelievable speeds. 

It was a great time of advancement, adventure, and experimentation. Some of those who built these great, unforgiving machines also became the mentors for hundreds of others who followed. These special few not only pursued their own projects, but stopped to share what they had learned with others. Guiding, advising, encouraging, they were tireless in their belief that there was much to be learned in the pursuit of amateur rocketry and they helped all who came and asked. Amateur rocketry, as a whole, owes a debt of gratitude to the few who trained and directed those of us too young and full of wild enthusiasm for our own good. They taught us many things, fed our enthusiasm for learning, encouraged us through failures, and kept us safe all the while with their knowledge and experience. 

This course is dedicated to one such man, Mr. George Dosa. George has been an active rocket propulsion experimentalist for many years. In many ways, he can truly be considered one of the founding fathers of experimental rocketry. George Dosa was the state of California’s first licensed solid propellant rocket pyrotechnic operator. He has been the back-bone of the Reaction Research Society for the last 38 years and still serves today as the Director of Research for the RRS. 

George has dedicated his life to the continuance, advancement and testing of experimental rocket propulsion systems. He represents the very essence of the golden years of experimental rocketry and has crusaded to preserve the right of new experimenters to follow this fascinating and technical hobby. Giving generously of his own time, he has contributed greatly to the education and encouragement of others. As a consequence, the Reaction Research Society would like to thank George by dedicating this first in a series of amateur rocketry propulsion classes to him personally and to his efforts in behalf of amateur rocketry over the years. ” 

Niels Anderson and David Crisalli, March 1996

George told me once that he had been born 30 years too early…he would have liked to have been that much younger when the age of rocketry began to blossom in the 1950’s and 1960’s. From my standpoint, George was born at exactly the right time. Had he been born later, we might not have met and worked together as we did. George lived for nearly a century and all through that time he was a kind, patient, and enthusiastic teacher, a gentle man with dreams of exploring the heavens. I will miss him greatly and I will say farewell (for now) with an old nautical expression….I wish you fair winds and a following sea, George. In a twinkling of God’s eye, we will meet again.

Most sincerely, 

David E. Crisalli, August 2019

David Crisalli is a lifetime member and former President of the RRS. He also is the owner of Polaris, Inc. in Simi Valley, California, a rocket propulsion testing and consulting company.

In Memory of George Dosa (1922-2019)

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by Osvaldo Tarditti, President of the Reaction Research Society (RRS) and Dave Nordling, Secretary of the RRS

It is with great sorrow that we announce the death of our beloved friend, George Dosa. He passed away at his home on Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 6:15am. He was 96 years old.

George was a long-time member of the RRS and a friend to everyone he met. His personality and knowledge will be missed greatly. But even though he is no longer with us, he is still a source of inspiration to continue the effort to carry the Society forward.

George Dosa was born on November 12, 1922, in Cleveland, Ohio. He moved to Los Angeles, California, when he was 15. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1942 and became an Aviation Metalsmith, 3rd Class. He was shipped out to Guam and later to mainland China in Shanghai where he had his own metal shop until the US Navy left China before the Communist Revolution in 1949.

George Dosa serving in the U.S. Navy in World War 2

Returning to the US, he enrolled in the Northrop Aero Nautical Institute then later worked for Aerojet, Gilfillan, Harvey Aluminum, and then NCR. He took night classes at the University of Southern California in engineering and ultimately worked at TRW until his retirement in 1987.

George joined the RRS sometime in the 1950’s at the encouragement of B.J. Humphreys, another giant in amateur rocketry. George’s association with the RRS would be one of his great joys throughout his life.

George Dosa makes a presentation on rocketry at TRW in the 1960’s

George Dosa was the first licensed pyrotechnic operator in rocketry in the state of California. He made large contributions to the rules and regulations governing amateur rocketry with the Office of the Fire Marshal in the state of California (CALFIRE). Although the RRS was founded in Glendale in the shadow of what would become the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the RRS still holds its monthly meetings in Gardena, because of George. It was George that came to the Gardena Community Center (now called the Ken Nakaoka Community Center) and found our meeting place which has served us for decades and to this very day.

George never held office in the RRS executive council, instead chose to mentor, teach and research issues for the society. The office of the Director of Research in the RRS was created specifically for George Dosa. This was a role he held for many years.

He loved being out at the RRS’s testing site, the Mojave Test Area (MTA), and the metal quonset hut still in use today bears his name. George was passionate about taking data in every experiment and documented a lot of his work. A lot of George’s work survives in the RRS archives which have many documents still in need of digital conversion.

George Dosa and Marianne Butterfield at the RRS MTA
Richard Butterfield and George Dosa at the RRS MTA in 1987
George Dosa (far right) in his characteristic hat at the 50th anniversary symposium of the RRS in 1993.
George Dosa at the 2017 RRS symposium.

George’s love for the society was shown in the many people he mentored and influenced. The RRS is stronger thanks to his decades of patient dedication to amateur rocketry.

George Dosa in a recent undated photo.

The RRS, along with George’s extended family, said goodbye to George on Friday, September 6, 2019 in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. He was given US Navy honors and will be remembered forever by a grateful nation for his service. Many members of the RRS were present to pay their respects and many more were there in spirit and have sent their condolences to the family.

George Dosa being laid to rest with US Navy present
from left to right: Jim Gross, Larry Hoffing, Chris Lujan, Osvaldo Tarditti, Frank Miuccio, George Garboden, David Crisalli, Dave Nordling, John Mariano, John Krell, Chip Bassett

EDITOR’S NOTE: Further expansion of this article will be done as others in the society wish to share their stories of George and his considerable influence on many people in amateur rocketry. The RRS is also grateful to the Dosa family for their help with this article.