I figured it was the typical startup troubles with LAUNCH, that they were just hiccups that happen with new stuff... I was wrong.

What REALLY infuriated me about that situation was, they weren't tending to business. Oh, they were HAPPY to take your money for product, but they were BLOWING IT on big soirees and schmoozing big cheeses in the hobby and industry (like the huge Apollo 7 party they threw for Walt Cunningham) just to promote themselves. They were LOUSY business people, but TERRIFIC self-promoters-- so good in fact that SOME misguided fools actually DEFENDED them because "of all the good they do" when their behavior was that of COMMON THIEVES. Actually, it's WORSE... common thieves typically steal to support their drug habits or other issues (usually of their own making, which gives them no excuse) but at least partially because their bad off. THOSE LAUNCH MAGAZINE SCUMBAGS were just thieves not out of need or necessity but out of SHEER UNADULTERATED GREED.

I don't excuse theft at ANY time, but it's WAY different to simply "cut and run" like some bunko schemers versus people who are victims of circumstances... like PDR, for instance. Most rocketry vendors ARE small businesses in the classical sense, usually only a small handful of people, usually related, usually operating either out of their home or shop or a small brick-n-mortar somewhere (or ancient store somewhere as the case may be). If someone gets deathly ill, of course it UNDERSTANDABLY affects the entire business, particularly if its the person who is the "backbone" of the business or the main show-runner. Rocketry folks are generally speaking a good crew and understanding and forgiving that way. It doesn't make it right, but sometimes life throws folks curve balls... Take for instance Hawks Hobbies (IIRC) or the McLawhorns of Semroc... sudden chronic serious illness or sudden passing away just destroyed their ability to continue their businesses. Yet they didn't stiff people and were a total class act in how they handled and wrapped up their business affairs! Then, on the other hand, you have situations like Sheri's Hot Rockets or Red Arrow Hobbies, who hit some speedbump in life (nasty divorce in Sheri's case, so she used her rocket company's funds to relocate to Hawaii from California by all accounts, stiffing a large number of customers who paid for VERY expensive HPR kits that were never shipped, or just "folded up shop" due to life issues and left a lot of product undelivered and refunds unpaid last I heard in the case of Red Arrow...) It was particularly lousy in the case of SHR, because she just cut and ran with the customer's money with NO INTENTION of giving it back or producing/delivering the product, and what she WAS shipping was "substandard" and had been for awhile. I visited Red Arrow Hobbies HQ in rural Michigan one time not long after they bought SHR, and was shown the "masters" used to pull Gemini capsule molds, which was COMPLETELY worn out, so he was having a guy make a new master that was actually scale accurate and highly detailed. I was rather amazed at how and where they did business, however-- it appeared to be an ancient appliance store, little more than a tin building with a glass front, well out of town in the woods not far from Lake Michigan, which looked like it was built in the 70's, and had gone out of business. There were some appliance hulks or other detritus out back, and of course the parking lot had weeds growing in it and the whole place was rather overgrown and poorly kept. Inside it was pretty hot and uncomfortable on an otherwise pleasant summer day, because there was NO A/C, and the only ventilation was from the front doors being propped open (with a long foyer-type entryway for wintertime stacked with boxes and crates and doors to the outside propped open, and a door in back to the side of the building propped open, so the breeze through the building was practically nonexistent.) Most of the old fluorescent lights were off, the walls were lined practically waist to ceiling with kits, and glass display cases or boxes of tubes and supplied lined the walls, with several aisles of old display racks and stuff lined the sales floor. Across the south end of the building ran a LONG old glass display case with small rocket electronics like altimeters and such, motor cases, and other odd-n-ends, bracketed on one end by the propped open back door and at the other end, and OLD computer which the owner used to process orders, and the last 10-12 feet of case lined with open order boxes with printouts of the orders in the top, which he was in the process of filling. That's why when you ordered from Red Arrow, if something you ordered was currently out-of-stock, the box simply sat open on the counter half-full of whatever else you ordered, until the remaining stuff came in to fill the order. No sophisticated computer ordering system, no real practical way to send you what he already had in stock and later send you what he was waiting for. Just a basic printout of your order laying in the top of a box. As boxes were filled and checked off, they were taped shut and his wife/girlfriend, working at another ancient computer in the front NW corner of the foyer/entryway, would weigh it, print the shipping label, and add it to the stack around her desk and lining the entry foyer to the store, obviously picked up maybe once a week by a UPS or other shipper truck... It was a VERY "shoestring" operation to say the least, and he'd added home-brewing supplies to supplement their income. People that griped about Red Arrow not shipping their orders for months, now they know why-- He LITERALLY filled orders from printouts of their order form online, that was the order filling system, so no way to track what was shipped and what was left remaining to be filled on an order EXCEPT the printout order sheet in the box! Plus, splitting an order and shipping two boxes would cost more than simply leaving the box on the counter until the missing item arrived and was tossed into the single box, checked off, and the entire order shipped at once. Unfortunately, if something didn't arrive from a vendor for a few weeks or months (or money was tight and he couldn't afford to order the item needed to fulfill your order for awhile-- by their appearance they weren't particularly well-off), your order would remain sitting on the counter at the tail-end of the line with other boxes awaiting their last absent item or two until the needed items FINALLY arrived and were added to the order before they were shipped. SO, ordering from Red Arrow was very much a "waiting game" in some cases-- if what you ordered was "in stock" you'd get your order in days, if it wasn't it might be a couple MONTHS til you got your order, because it WOULD NOT be shipped until the ENTIRE order was filled due to his business system... Then he fell on hard times and his business folded up, sad to say. From what I hear some folks were left holding the bag. Not out of malice or selfishness, I would say, but probably simply because the guy doesn't have enough left to "make it right"...

LAUNCH, OTOH, was run by thieving scumbags... they had a "big idea" and went "whole hog" in producing it, the magazine was beautiful-- high dollar glossy paper, lots of full color images, interesting stories, high-end commentators like Walt Cunningham, etc... but it was expensive. They had a contract to produce magazines for stuff like the AIAA, and "Launch" was their pet project. They threw a lot of money around schmoozing "all the right people" in rocketry circles, etc. which impressed a lot of people, but it was all on "someone else's dime"... it's easy to give money to rocketry scholarships and stuff when it's money that OTHER PEOPLE HAD PAID YOU FOR PRODUCT YOU NEVER DELIVERED! Then, when "the party was over" and the bills came due, they simply "cut and run" like con-artists off to their next mark.

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Regrettable situations often overtake many of us at some point in life, often through no fault of our own... it's how we behave and handle those situations that make the difference... The sudden illness or death of the show-runner of a small rocketry vendor can leave the family/survivors unable to cope with fulfilling the unfilled business orders of the customers or without sufficient funds or capability to issue the refunds. Life issues can arise, things spiral out of control, and leave the vendor in such a lurch and with sudden changes that they're unable (or unwilling) to complete their business transactions and wrap up their businesses with class and propriety... whether they have legal or medical or family problems and simply can't "wrap up" the remaining orders before folding up shop, or they make the decision to just "cut and run" and use the unfilled order money to make a very expensive move to another very expensive state and set up a new lifestyle after a nasty divorce. But IMHO the pinnacle of scumbaggery is TAKING PEOPLE'S MONEY TO THE VERY LAST HOUR, KNOWING that you have NO INTENTION WHATSOEVER of fulfilling their orders made in good faith, just to rake in as much as you can before suddenly cutting and running and just pulling the plug on the whole operation and making off with whatever you can, which is EXACTLY what those Launch magazine SCUMBAGS did!

It all comes down to character and class... some people have it, like Sheryl McLawhorn, who wrapped everything up when Semroc could no longer operate with class and style, making sure everyone was properly taken care of, and unfortunately some people don't-- like Sheri who just took care of herself and screw everybody else. Then you have just pure rotten thieves like the LAUNCH magazine rip-off artists, who take the money to the last second then run like the cockroaches they are with whatever they can carry after DELIBERATELY screwing everyone over, and never even ATTEMPT to make it right...

Later! OL J R

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Yep... well, so it seemed at the time. There was a LOT of hype back in the shadow of the X-Prize and everything that "space tourism" was "just around the corner". I always saw the line of gazillionaires lined up for their $40,000 tickets for a fifteen minute 'space hop' with five minutes of weightlessness as a "flash in the pan", demand "a mile wide, but an inch deep". IOW, once the few people who could afford to blow such money on a "little space hop" had done it, it would be over with-- nobody "in the unwashed masses" has that kind of money to blow on a space-hop to create sustainable demand.

The other issue I figured that would eventually push it into obscurity would be, sooner or later, there'd be a fatal crash and a bunch of gazillionaires would end up splattered all over the desert floor after a space hop, and interest would dry up-- after all, it's far better to be an ALIVE gazillionaire than a dead one, and while a flashy ritzy space hop might give you bragging rights among the jet-set crowd, another "boring" vacation to the Riviera with hard liquor and soft women and coming back alive is more fun than being a dead grease spot in a crater in the desert left by a crashed space hop vehicle...

Later! OL J R

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Heyyyyy nowww. My significant other and I often vacation in the mayan Riviera and we are far from gazillionaires !
We don't stiff people either.

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When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, and HAVOC !

Probably more like a half inch deep . Those articles were hardly worth reading or belonged in a scifi mag.

Yep, amazing how all those "imminent" private spaceflights are still "pending" all these years later...

OL J R

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Private human space flights are another "all mouth" undelivered item that shall be labeled "Vaporware" until further notice....

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When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, and HAVOC !

You used to be able to hitch a ride on a Soyuz but you would be charged correctly for the trip, so it is rightly out of reach of almost everyone.

Well, I thought I had this PD Rocketry A-20 Demon In my collection too so I looked for it. It turns out my kit was made by InFlight Rockets. Nice foil decals too just like the originals. I didn’t even remember InFlight Rockets until I pulled the kit so I searched online and found a Wasp kit review on EMRR that you built made by InFlight!
Too many Rockets ... too little memory

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Steve Naquin
TRA# 677 L2
NAR# 85518 L2
SAM# 0052

🚀 In Construction: Der Blue Maxx/Minie-Magg 5.5” & Vander-Burn MDRM Clone w/Stickershock23 Custom Decals
🚀 In Paint & Detail: USR Banshee
🚀 In Build Queue: Estes Doorknob w/Vander-Burn Rocketry Upgrade Kit [Sport Decor], Semroc Centurion-F, Semroc Egg Crate
🚀 In Repair: SLS Lil’ Hustler, SLS Aero-Dart 1969 Trim
🚀 Stay Tuned For Fall 2021 Launch Dates

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I thought that I had bought an Astron Sprint clone from PDR, but I'm not 100% certain that it was from them. I remember buying the kit off eBay and ordering a set of laser-cut fins for it from Carl at Semroc, I haven't been able to locate it yet to confirm or deny. I still have a couple of boxes of unbuilt kits left to search, though.

I did find a few kits that I have absolutely no recollection of buying, like a Black Brant III from Inflight Rockets, plus I bunch that I had forgotten about until I unearthed them.

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John Buscaglia
NAR 27366
SAM 63
CMASS Member