History and use of the Estes AstroCam 110 | Hacker News Reader

History and use of the Estes AstroCam 110

dembrudders.com

68 pointsmmmlinux18 comments

The first personal computer generally available in the United States, the MITS Altair, grew out of projects like this.

MITS was an acronym: "Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems". Ed Roberts and Forrest Mims made electronics kits for model rockets.

As a 1970s kid, I built Estes rockets, but I never did anything fancy. You'd spend a week or two of free time, building the kit and painting it. Then you'd blow it up on the launch pad, or launch it into the wild blue and never see it again. Or spend all your birthday money on a Star Wars X-Wing fighter, launch it, and have it nose-dive into the dirt about ten feet away.

Come to think of it, model rocketry was exactly like real rocketry.

Forrest Mims enriched my life in other ways, with his patient lab manuals for the Radio Shack electronics kits.

Completely shared experiences with regards to both Forrest's books and Estes' rockets, except after enough losses of the latter I got pretty fatalistic about new rockets. They were assembled and flown same day as soon as the glue dried, with maybe a slapdash decal; there wasn't much point investing too much time or energy when the wind or a tree was going to take them anyway.

And of course Bill Gates and Paul Allen started their company to write BASIC for the MITS Altair.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Instrumentation_and_Tele...

My father had a 1970s Estes catalog that I adored as a kid. It had the ultimate camera rocket that I wanted to fly: The Cineroc (https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/rocket-flying-...)

In the late 90s I finally saw some model rocket-based videos, made flying camcorders or TV transmitters on high power model rockets.

Today drones have made DIY aerial photography much less difficult, but I definitely wanted to fly cameras in my youth.

I built and flew both Camroc and Astrocam. Did not get any pictures with Camroc. I got a lot of pictures with Astrocam, a good many of them blue sky.

I never got the full 110 cartridge full of pictures. As the article implies, any model rocket flight had a decent probability of either catastrophic failure, or being impossible to retrieve. Get 6 or 7 flights on a cartridge, the temptation to develop it was too much.

My Camroc produced exactly one usable photograph. It was hell to load it with a single disk of unexposed film.

You have my admiration! I remember it being completely fiddly, both loading the film, and cocking the shutter, then keeping it cocked.

I loved my AstroCam as a kid. I think dad and I tried six launches. When a photo finally came out it was the best day. Thank you for sharing, a great reminder of how far we’ve come. Also of how short attention span has eroded patience during many of today’s prescribed “STEM” activities.

On film availability. It's relatively easy to slit film to width, with little jigs that are machined or 3D printed. This is popular for Minox "spy" cameras since new 8x11 reels are $20+ and you can refill an old plastic cartridge if you're very careful. The stock is about 8-9mm wide depending on the camera and so a 35mm roll will yield 2 strips that can be cut to length.

Some enterprising person makes a machined an aluminium Minox film cartridge, which is expensive, but solves the problem of the originals being incredibly fragile. It doesn't take many retail rolls to justify the cost though.

https://juliantanase.com/about-minox-film-cassettes-old-and-...

Here's a 110 slitter: insert https://www.camerhack.it/product/110-film-cutter/

ha I vaguely remember that from the catalogs

But what I REALLY remember is learning that H class motors existed and became obsessed with finding one but the internet wasn't a thing yet so it was impossible

(several times more powerful than E class)

fun list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_rocket_motor_classificat...

Yeah, the letters go up by powers of two. So an H would be eight Es, sixteen Ds. Considering the cost of a three pack of the latter, I could only dream of those brutes.

Same here. Even the small motors were expensive at the time. One winter my dad and I figured out how to make our own—rolled the casing out of packing tape, poured the end plug from (I think) Durham‘s rock-hard water putty, then filled with fuel made from a mixture of black powder, sugar, and salt peter. The next summer, getting to use up all the engines we’d stockpiled, was glorious.

I had (maybe still have somewhere?) a book I'd ordered online as a youth, on how to do exactly that. They were somewhat fiddly, in the sense of being slightly lower-impulse, with clay nozzles and a hollow fuel grain. Never quite got around to making any. I should look for that book though. In any case, it's likely harder than it used to be to get saltpeter, which they just carried in the pharmacy.

From what I recall you needed to assemble any engine larger than a D yourself.

I forgot all about this! Had one of these. Grew up in San Diego near the beach.

First time launching it up, it caught a big breeze, drifted west, never to be seen again.

I've still got mine somewhere, did get some pics with it. I was paranoid about losing it though, so I went with a couple big streamers instead of a parachute to get it closer to the launch site.

The astrocam was for rich kids and dads.

even camroc was like $5

Everybody knew big money was better spent on D engines.

And black powder chute replacements.

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