FROM THE READER
Dan Bisbee | District Director of the Eastern WA Office for Congressman Michael Baumgartner
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Dan Bisbee
District Director of the Eastern Washington office for Congressman Michael Baumgartner
seattleworldcruiser. org
THAT BRIEF, EXCITING, AND UNPREDICTABLE SOUND OF A MODEL ROCKET SHOOTING INTO THE SKY ABOVE AN OPEN STRETCH OF FARMLAND DEFINES SO MANY WEEKENDS OF MY YOUTH GROWING UP IN THE RURAL OUTSKIRTS OF SELINSGROVE, PENNSYLVANIA.
After the late summer corn harvest was the best time to find the open space needed to locate my launcher and blast off my latest rocket, one of those Estes kits purchased at Kay Bee Toys with earnings from my summer job mowing the lawn at the local airport. That same field is where I convinced my father to help me drag out my telescope on several chilly pre-dawn mornings in the spring of 1986, cementing my bragging rights to the claim that I was there, tracking the appearance of Halley’ s Comet, during its first go-around during the spaceflight era.
There has been a lot of ground covered between those days in central Pennsylvania and my current life here in the Inland Northwest. My trajectory, personally and professionally, is probably more similar to that of those model rockets than I would care to admit— somewhat erratic, and often subject to gravitational pulls and buffeted
50 NORTHWEST AEROSPACE NEWS