Doctor
I have seen Estes ads and posted on the net as to the total of motors used. What is the estimated total of BP motors launched over the past 50 years. Would you have a rough idea. Say 300 -500 million is that in the ballpark.? I get asked this question every once in a while so I thought a better answer would be in order.

BAR
John

Jphn

I have seen the figure used in advertising of over 300 million llaunches. I would venture to guess, over 500 million, and, this is just a guess.

If anyone would have a betteer guess, please respond, may Roy or Fred would have thier own estimates.

Update on the figures

315 - 325 million

That's about one launch per second ... for ten years!

-- Roger

Does that 315-325 million figure refer to motors expended or launches? We must take into account multi-staging and clustering.

Estes only? What about Centuri, MPC, MRC, FSI, Quest, etc. ???


Laden or unladen?

__________________
-Fred Shecter NAR 20117 (L2)
Southern California Rocket Association, NAR Section 430

Estes.....according to their advertising, that is launches, no telling how many motors were purchased and not used.

It just like special issued stamps, say, Elvis, they might have produced,let's say 10 million, but, only 1 million was used, the postal service makes out on collector stamps.

I would say that the figures are an estimate, from my source.

I suggest we keep this information to ourselves, or the global warming fanatics will come after our hobby for contributing to greenhouse gases.

I don't think we have to worry. Assuming an average total impulse of 7.5 Ns (a C motor), 312,000,000 launches would equal about 2.3 Billion Ns of total impulse. Although that sounds like a lot, it's about the same as the total impulse provided by the two SRBs during a single shuttle launch.

-- Roger

In regards to the envorinmental fanatics, my wife is an environmental scientist. A lot of pollution used to come from industries, but industries have really cleaned up their emissions over the last 20 to 30 years (at least the domestic ones). Things like rockets are (probably) a very minor source of pollutants. Like it or not, the biggest polluter is the thing you drive to get to the place you launch your rockets. Cars and trucks are horrible polluters; mainly due to the huge numbers of vehicles in this country. Even a minor reduction in tailpipe emissions has a huge effect because of the sheer number of cars and trucks out there.