Federal Government going after Hobby Rocketry

This appeared in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Since they require subscription to access, the article is included below (in the extended entry) as posted on the Rec.Models.Rockets newsgroup.

The hobby rocketry community is small and active, so I've talked to most of the rocketeers or shopped at the hobby shops mentioned in the article. This is the perfect example of Homeland Security acting in a way that will not actually make anyone safer, but they can point to it as an example of ways that they're working to protect us. Justifying their existance is what I call it.

For the most part, the article is fair and reasonably accurate. The main point missed though isn't the cost of the new permits, it's the unreasonable storage requirements which are damn near impossible to comply with.

May 7, 2004 PAGE ONE Explosive Debate: Should U.S. Check Up On Model Rockets?

Under 9/11 Law, ATF Keeps
Tabs on Propellant Buyers;
Feds Visit Al's Hobby Shop

By ROBERT BLOCK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 7, 2004; Page A1

ELMHURST, Ill. -- Al's Hobby Shop in this leafy corner of suburban
Chicago is always packed with mothers looking for Cub Scout badges,
teenagers ogling imported slot cars and grown men playing with model
trains.

But to federal law-enforcement officials, Al's is also a possible
terrorist supply depot. And so, last October, a special agent from the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was sent to Al's
from Washington to buy $1,700 in model rocket motors.

"The guy told me that the government wanted to do some tests," recalls
Tim Lehr, who sold the agent 40 motors containing almost 60 pounds of
propellant. "He wouldn't say what the tests were for, but I could
guess: The government wanted to ruin my hobby."

Since the passage of the initial post-9/11 antiterrorism laws in
October 2001, hobby rocketry has been struggling to avoid regulation
that enthusiasts say will destroy their sport, deter youngsters from
pursuing an interest in science and waste the nation's limited
law-enforcement resources. The Department of Justice says that federal
agents need to keep an eye on who is buying model rockets because the
toys are potentially dangerous and could be adapted by terrorists to
attack airplanes and American soldiers.

At the heart of the problem is a long-running dispute between
hobbyists and the ATF, which is part of the Justice Department, over
how to legally classify the chemicals used to propel rockets. Ammonium
perchlorate composite propellant, better known as APCP, is a rubbery
mixture of resins, powdered metals and salts that ignites at 500
degrees Fahrenheit and burns like a road flare on steroids. It's the
same fuel that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration uses
in the solid rocket boosters on the space shuttle.

For hobby rockets, APCP comes in the form of pellets wrapped in
cardboard about an inch in diameter and three inches long. The
cylinders, which start at $12.50 apiece and can go up into the
hundreds of dollars, can be stacked in reusable aluminum casings to
power larger rockets.

Rocketeers have always maintained that APCP doesn't detonate, it
deflagrates. That is, it burns intensely at a controlled rate. Since
1971, however, the ATF has branded APCP as a "low explosive" subject
to regulation and licensing by the bureau. In practice, the ATF
largely ignored the rocketeers as long as they weren't selling or
buying APCP across state lines.

With new fears about national security after 9/11, President Bush
signed the Safe Explosives Act, an antiterrorism law contained in the
bill that created the Department of Homeland Security. In effect for a
year, the law now requires permits for all purchases of rocket motors
and all explosives, including APCP.

Suddenly, hobbyists who had been freely purchasing such motors for
years had to be fingerprinted and to submit to background checks. They
had to pay $25 for ATF low-explosive-user permits to purchase more
than 2.5 ounces of APCP and allow local and federal inspectors onto
their property anytime to check for proper storage of the propellant.

The government insists it is trying to balance civil liberties with
homeland safety. But federal investigators say that since terrorists
showed they could level skyscrapers with boxcutters, no potentially
suspicious activity can be ignored. "Most of the people involved in
these activities are harmless fanatics and nerds," says one federal
law-enforcement official. "But since 9/11, we have a responsibility to
make sure the nerds are not terrorists."

Other hobbyist have also come under federal scrutiny, including bird
watchers on the Canadian border and operators of radio-controlled
airplanes. But this does little to console the rocketeers. Terry
McCreary, associate professor of analytical chemistry at Murray State
University in western Kentucky and a hobby-rocket guru, says sport
rocketry helps kids by interesting them in wonders of chemistry,
physics, astronomy and aerodynamics. "If you look deeply into the
background of our top mathematicians and scientists, you will find a
kid with a model rocket."

Pointing at a troop of about 15 Boy Scouts at a recent launch in The
Plains, Va., Doug Pratt, who runs his own hobby-rocket business out of
his basement in Herndon, asked: "Does that look like a group of
terrorists to you?"

Faced with the prospect of being fingerprinted and having agents
poking around their past, many rocketeers are leaving the hobby. The
rocket club at Kettering University in Michigan has closed down
because of the new regulatory requirements.

Looking for help, rocket groups have turned to Republican Sen. Mike
Enzi of Wyoming, an avid fan of hobby rockets and model airplanes. In
May last year, Senator Enzi sponsored a bill to exempt hobby rockets
from government regulation.

The Department of Justice, which oversees the ATF, then wrote him a
letter saying that "large rocket motors could be adapted by terrorists
for use in surface-to-air missiles capable of intercepting commercial
and military airplanes at cruise level and for use in 'light antitank'
weapons capable of hitting targets from a range of nearly five miles."

Mr. Enzi wrote back to Attorney General Ashcroft, asking to see the
results of the tests that led his department to its conclusions.
Within weeks, an agent from the ATF was sent to Al's Hobby Shop
outside Chicago to buy the first rocket motors for testing. Over the
past six months, according to ATF officials, agents and private
contractors have been working at Air Force bases in Utah and Florida
firing model rockets at drones, vehicles and simulated crowds of
people. The tests are classified.

Some rocketeers have hit upon another solution: They make their own
fuel. They get together on weekends with pizza, beer and jars of
precursor chemicals for "cooking parties" in their homes and
apartments or in the back rooms of their businesses.

"It's legal and completely safe," says Jerry O'Sullivan, an insurance
agent who cooks fuel with his friends in suburban Washington. Mr.
O'Sullivan, who is a member of the Maryland Delaware Rocketry
Association Inc., is taking advantage of a loophole in explosives
legislation exempting anyone who mixes an explosive for his own
"personal" use from having to get a permit. The exemption was created
mainly for farmers who mix fertilizers and fuel oil to blast their own
irrigation ditches.

One oddity of the government crackdown is the focus on rockets and not
guidance systems. "The secret is in the guidance systems," says Arthur
"Trip" Barber, a former captain of a U.S. navy guided missile
destroyer, who is now vice president of the National Association of
Rocketry. "I can build a rocket overnight but I couldn't build a
guidance system in a lifetime."