A Number Of Updates…

It’s the very end of December, 2017, as I write this, and a lot has happened since the last post. The model rocketry community mourned the loss of SEMROC’s head honcho, Carl McLawhorn, to a massive heart attack just a few short years after the luncheon in Dallas. His passing took a lot more of the wind out of my sails in wanting to get active again in the hobby. Within a year of that event, SEMROC the company was sold to eRockets. I do think it’s in good hands, all things considered, but it’s just not the same without Carl.

The space community has had it’s own share of losses, too. We lost Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, and a few other Apollo-era veterans since the Apollo 7 anniversary. Just a few days ago as I write this, we lost Bruce McCandless. For those who might not remember, he was the CAPCOM for Apollo 11, and later was the iconic ‘human spaceship’ when he took the MMU out of the shuttle bay in February of 1984 for a non-tethered EVA stroll.

In my own life, a change of residence about two years ago has put still more of a squash on getting back into rocketry. The new place is smaller, and much of my building stuff is still where I parked it during the move — in boxes, stacked, where I cannot get to them easily. Even if I could, there’s no place to work on them or display them safely. Sigh…

Again from the ‘big space’ community, SpaceX finally achieved their goals of first landing a booster safely on a barge at sea, then on dry land back at the Cape. Now, they’ve re-flown a few of those boosters, proving the concept of reusability is not a myth. They’ve also re-flown a couple of Dragon capsules to the ISS. Coming up soon will be the first flight of the Falcon Heavy, using two previously-flown boosters for the strap-ons. Heard what the payload is going to be? Elon’s personal cherry red Tesla sportster. Yes, seriously. They’ve posted pictures of the car inside the massive fairing on a mount. Elon says it will be playing ‘Space Oddity’ during the long flight ahead. Destination? Mars orbit. A red car for the red planet. Gotta love the mind of Elon.

Where do I go from here? Don’t know. Maybe one day the bug will bite me again. Not any time soon, however.