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Comment by RHSeeger | Hacker News Reader

> So I moved on to my next project, making a solid fuel rocket from scratch

Remember when you could get the ingredients to do things like that easily; sometimes even in a "Science Kit for Kids!" one would buy at Caldor or the like? Man, how times have changed.

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You can still do that easily today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_candy

I have seen potassium nitrate stump remover on the shelves at my local Fred Meyer (Kroger). If you can't find find it on shelves it's easy to order:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Potassium-Nitrate-Powder-99-8-Pur...

The vast majority of fireworks and rockets I made as a kid used potassium nitrate as an oxidizer. 5 pounds will provide many hours of entertainment and education.

In the late 1980s, the toy store at the mall carried a section of model rockets and rocket engines, igniters... supermarkets carried cap guns and refills in racks just before checkout.

Can't you get actual guns at some US supermarkets, in the 2020s? Meanwhile I'm pretty sure you can get those combination cap/spud guns in the seasonal aisle at larger UK supermarkets, and almost all French^. Funny.

(^when I was younger I remember being amazed by all the stuff you could get in French supermarkets, aisles and aisles of school supplies, summer toys/beach items, clothes, etc. - seems they were much earlier in that trend, and still seem to lean further into it, though it's been a few years since I've been.)

Most of the mainstream chain supermarkets in the US don't sell guns (Kroger, Target, Whole Foods, Costco, Albertsons, Ahold, Publix, Sams, HEB, Meijer, Aldi, et al.). Walmart is the primary exception there.

Overwhelmingly that's now handled by independent gun stores, or a select few sporting good chains (eg Dick's Sporting Goods - the largest sporting goods chain in the US - which sells a restricted set of rifles and a few shotguns; they came under pressure not long ago to get rid their guns and they capitulated and reduced what and how they sell [1]).

Big corporations in the US are drastically more sensitive today to gun issues and the related bad PR that goes with selling guns (even Walmart has rolled back their selling of guns).

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-dicks-sporting-goods-deci...

WTF?! You really have Aldi in the US? As a german I never supposed that.

Lidl as well (albeit less widespread)

Fascism as well (albeit less widespread)

We have lots of Aldi's in Australia, too.

> Internationally, Aldi Nord operates in Denmark, France, the Benelux countries, Portugal, Spain and Poland, while Aldi Süd operates in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Switzerland, Australia, China, Italy, Austria and Slovenia. Both Aldi Nord (as Trader Joe's) and Aldi Süd (as Aldi) also operate in the United States with 1,600 stores between them as of 2017,[11] and the U.S. is the only country to have both Aldi companies operating outside of Germany.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi

We have Aldi and we have Trader Joe's -- which is owned by the family of Theo Albrecht (Aldi Nord).

Trader Joe's sells all house-brand products aimed at a higher quality and price point.

I'm 42, when I sent my mom out with a shopping list for this stuff as a kid it ended up in her (almost) being arrested.

Yes, back in the 60's my buddy and I asked our parents to buy us some powdered aluminum and iron-oxide. We got in trouble because the chemical supply company warned them about our requested ingredients. That was the end of our homemade thermite project. So it was on to another project, homemade lock-picks.

> That was the end of our homemade thermite project

I call it luck.

I decided not to proceed, when understood, that I have no way to put it off.

> I decided not to proceed, when understood, that I have no way to put it off.

I didn't :)

It's all about the quantities.

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