Tag Archives: Glendale Rocket Society

75th anniversary for the RRS (1943-2018)

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It was on January 6, 1943, in Glendale, California, that our founder, George James started an amateur rocketry group that would become the Reaction Research Society. It is with great pleasure that we officially announce our 75th anniversary on this day, January 6, 2018.

The RRS turns 75 today.

As much as the world has changed in that time, our commitment to our core principles of learning, careful experimentation and sharing knowledge have not. It is with great pride that we celebrate this milestone year that few organizations have rivaled and that we today, more than ever, will remain vital in our Los Angeles community. We are most thankful to all of our former, past and current members for making our society possible over three quarters of a century.

The RRS is pleased to announce that a 75th anniversary issue of the Astro-Jet newsletter will be available for orders starting today. This is the same newsletter that George James issued quarterly and we are proud to mark this occasion with the Astro-Jet that many have loved over the years. The 75th anniversary Astro-Jet newsletter will be in print only and will not be posted online. Although this will be single issue, it will contain articles from many of our current and past members and including our founder, George James.

To those wanting to buy a copy, please contact the RRS secretary and provide your mailing address. We will, of course, not share your information outside of the society. Copies will (hopefully) be sent out this month. You can also use our “Donate” button (connected to Paypal) on the RRS.ORG website to buy your copies. Just be sure to make a specific note of “Astro-Jet” and how many copies you’re buying.

secretary@rrs.org

This special issue will be available in print only for a copy price of $10. This is fairly close to the same price of the Astro-Jet adjusted for inflation back in 1946. The proceeds will go to fund the many activities of the RRS including our upcoming 75th anniversary symposium on Saturday, April 14, 2018.

The start of this new year is also a good time to remind our current membership or those desiring to restart their membership that annual dues are $40 for members and $20 for student members. You can also use the RRS.ORG website’s “Donate” button (connected to Paypal) to pay your RRS dues, but please make a note of your name and that you are paying your “annual dues”.

Our next monthly meeting will be on Friday, January 12, 2018, at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena, California. As always, we invite members current and past to join us. We also welcome newcomers who would like to learn more.

Lots of progress with RRS archiving and history

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We’ve had a lot of progress recently with archiving RRS newsletters and other publications. I’ve put up six more newsletters. I’ve posted three more newsletters I received from Osvaldo a while back and had backlogged to post. This includes issue Vol_54_4_Dec_1997.pdf which is the second half of the RRS’s summary of the history of liquid propellant work at our society.

RRS liquid rockets from the 1990’s

Three more editions of the early Astrojet newsletter where also posted in the newsletters section with the help of Dave Nordling who got Caltech’s JPL library to send us what digital copies they had of Astrojet. I suspect they may have more in their archives because it seems odd to have only three non-sequential issues, but we haven’t been able to locate them through their catalog. The RRS is thankful to the Caltech JPL library for retaining and helping us obtain a copy of these early works of the Glendale Rocket Society (former name of the RRS). We hope to work with them more in finding all we can on the RRS history.

RRS founder, George James, with his “Slim Jim” rocket

Dave Crisalli shared with us ten more articles and two videos. These reports and videos have been posted on the “Other RRS articles” tab of the RRS website.

Six of these articles are from High Power Rocketry Magazine and were authored by Dave. Also included was the most recent versions of David Elliot’s and Lee Rosenthal’s hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) monopropellant rocket report from the 1950’s.

Dave Crisalli’s package included a Scientific American magazine article from 1957 which includes mention of the RRS. This is on the “Articles about the RRS” tab of our website.

Also we have an improved version of Dave Crisalli’s 1976 liquid rocket report that has been updated with more pictures and drawings.

Dave also shared two fantastic videos. One is the video report on the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) monopropellant rocket that was filmed at the time of construction and test in the 1950’s with audio narration by David Elliot being added later by Dave Crisalli.

The second is a video report on Dave’s sounding rocket, a written report on the Rocket was also shared. This video also includes some liquid propellant work done at the time by other RRS members.

Dave Crisalli’s regeneratively cooled LOX-kerosene rocket firing

Both of these new videos can be seen on the RRS YouTube channel linked below. Please subscribe to our channel so you can be informed of updates as we make them. There will certainly be more to come!
RRS YouTube channel – ReactionResearchSoc

Frank Miuccio, our society VP, contributed a small collection that I’ve also posted to the “articles about the RRS” tab of the RRS website. This included six magazine articles and some news clippings.

Image from Popular Science article

Another item added to the other RRS articles section, brought to us by John Mariano and scanned by RRS secretary, Dave Nordling, is a short book on early micrograin rockets jointly from the Reaction Research Society (RRS) and the Pacific Rocket Society (PRS). The title is simply “Micrograin Rockets” and was written by B.J. Humphreys Jr with excellent illustrations and descriptions.

Micrograin rocket and an early hybrid design (B.J. Humphreys Jr.)

Dave Nordling is also working on scanning a second book from John Mariano’s personal library which should be available soon.

A lot more will be coming soon. Frank Miuccio managed to obtain a collection of RRS newsletters. They are issue numbers 59 through 100 and he has lent them to me to scan. This will double the number of newsletters we have archived!

In addition to that, Dave Nordling has gotten for us the RRS material that happened to be scanned and collected by the Google Books Library Project. This was five documents some with several Astrojet editions included. The collection totals 934 pages in all. Although some of the Astrojet newsletters are duplicates. The collection includes reprints of the first eight RRS newsletters from our founding in 1943! A truly impressive find which we hope to share soon.

All this new material will have to be scanned and parsed before being posted, which I hope to accomplish one at a time over the next few months. I’ll write a follow-up post once it’s all up on the RRS website.

More RRS newsletters

We strongly encourage our current and former membership to consider donating or just letting the RRS borrow articles, photos and reports for scanning and inclusion into the ever-expanding RRS archives. We hope to build a great story for the RRS history project coinciding with our upcoming 75th anniversary next year.

If there are any errors, clarifications, questions, suggestions or other things you’d like to add or donate to the RRS archives, contact me at research@rrs.org.

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