Do-It-Yourself Rocket

Since he first began reading about the subject, Jimmy Blackmon of Charlotte, N.C. has been embarrassing his elders with precocious questions on science. By the time he hit junior high school he was wondering about rockets. "He read everything he could get his hands on about them," says his father. "Everything."

This summer, at the age of 17, Jimmy put the U.S. military in a mild flap. For years government officials have mourned that the nation's youth have no incentive to enter the world of science. Jimmy had plenty of incentive. Enough, in fact, to sit down and build a six-foot rocket. Jimmy wanted to enter further into the world of science by flying his rocket from a farm outside Charlotte (pop. 145,000). He was confident that it would work fine. Why shouldn't it? He had made it himself on a rickety table in his basement.

When his plan came to light, the Civil Aeronautics Administration blinked, then decided that Jimmy's unguided missile would violate air regulations. The U.S. Army was more sympathetic, even offered to examine his do-it-yourself rocket at the massive Redstone Arsenal, center of its guided missile program.

The rocket was plainly no 'toy. Jimmy, a quiet, confident boy, is in the top eight of his class at Phillips Academy at Andover, Mass., holds one of the school's major scholarships. When Army experts tore down Jimmy's rocket -planned to be fired by combining liquid nitrogen, gasoline and liquid oxygen -they were amazed at his skill. "It's surprisingly close to several motors already developed,"said John Womble, deputy chief of Redstone's Rocket Development Laboratory. "We found the fundamental approach clever and admirable."

But the Army also found that Jimmy's basement workshop could not produce the requisite materials to control the flow and .mixing of fuel. Last week, regretfully, the Army grounded Jimmy's rocket. But Redstone's commander, Brigadier General Holger N. Toftoy, tried to hold open the door of science for Jimmy. Said the general: "We're going to ask Jimmy to come back and go to work for us when he finishes college."

Jimmy is impatient. "My rocket wasn't any more crude than that of Von Braun [Dr. Wernher von Braun, one of the creators of the German V-2 and now chief of Redstone's Guided Missile Development Division] when he started experimenting," he said. "I want to talk to him if I can, and see what I need to do to improve my rocket. They didn't say it wouldn't fly, just that it was dangerous."

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