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Originally Posted by Ez2cDave
Those are great words . . . Words to live by !
Data un-shared will eventually be data lost and data lost is a huge detriment to Scale modeling specifically, Rocketry in general, and history itself, overall .
Dave F.
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*Nods* That's why I'm sharing what I have; when I was growing up, older relatives gave me their spaceflight, astronomy, and science books, and I am doing this for two "adoptive nephews" (the grandsons of one of my disabled van drivers, and of my recently-retired physical therapist). Also:
Space flight has now been around for a lifetime (the first instrumented V-2 flew from White Sands in 1946--
that was 75 years ago!), and those who brought it about, in all countries, are dying out fast; hence my interest in vehicles that have little or no documentation. G. Harry Stine himself, in his "Handbook of Model Rocketry," admonished those interested in rocket scale modeling & history to measure available vehicles while we can. He pointed out that the missiles and rockets weren't built to last forever, but to be "shipped and shot," and:
He also pointed out that dissimilar metal corrosion is slowly eating the early space capsules, gradually reducing them to piles of powder--"You may end up having the only data on a vehicle [such as the Nike-Hercules at the local VFW, or the IRBM or ICBM at the gate of a nearby Air Force Base] that everyone took for granted for years." (The horizontally-displayed Titan I ICBM in Titusville [just across from the Cape] that was pristine when I saw it in 1975--when my parents and I were there to watch the Apollo-Soyuz launches; we saw Soyuz 19 lift off on television that morning--was much the worse for wear when I saw it online a few years ago, including being missing one of its two first stage engines.)