In the fall of 1999, I became a Born Again Rocketeer. After a gap of a good twenty years, I again felt the urge to build paper and wood missiles and fire them into the air...and this time, I could afford to do it right! 

On the following pages are some random pictures that we've taken at launches. I'm the big balding guy with glasses. Other folks in the shots are friends and relatives, and sometimes random kids who wander by to push buttons and retrieve the debris.

Most of these pictures were taken by my lovely wife, who shows much enthusiasm for the launches and sympathy for the crashes, but refuses to do anything as undignified as actually chase after a rocket. Smart girl!

The vast majority of the pictures are of the type I call "before or after" shots, because we don't have a camera of enough quality to capture the lift-off with any consistency.

Why don't we take our camera to every launch? I can't answer this question. I suppose that we get complacent,  thinking that one launch picture is very much like another. But you never know what tragedy may occur that begs to be captured on film. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy launches resemble one another, but each unhappy launch is unhappy in its own way.