Groups affected include university students engaged in Aerospace education nationwide and their research and practical activities outside of the classroom, hundreds of high schools participating in the Team America Rocketry Challenge, and over ten thousand registered rocket hobbyists and their children who enage in hobby rocketry together as an educational and fun outdoor sport.
The cascade effect of the regulation also threatens to drive the entire industry of small businesses to extinction. These businesses manufacture and resell hobby and amateur rocketry materials.
Senator Mike Enzi (R - Wyoming) introduced a bill (S. 724) in the United States Senate last week to give hobby rocketeers an exemption. Senator Enzi is tentatively scheduled to make a speech on the bill in Monday's (March 31) session.
The Senator's press release is at http://enzi.senate.gov/model.htm
More information on the initiative to obtain legislative relief from the excessive regulation of hobby rocketry is at http://www.space-rockets.com/arsanews.html
Information to assist news organizations in researching the situation can be found at http://rocketreporter.org
This last site includes links to all identified published media coverage to date, lists of knowledgable contacts, rocketry clubs, and non-professional rocketry projects.
Please get involved, and urge your Senators to co-sponsor or otherwise support the legistative relief for hobby and amateur rocketry.
- iz