Three amateur scientists-my brother Sterling, Robert Condit and I fired a rocket on an August day in Baltimore in 1928. Our launch pad was a sidewalk on a Morling avenue. Our spacecraft was a 24-foot, bullet-shaped rocket made out of angle iron and sailcloth, with 50 gallons of gasoline for fuel and eight steel pipes for rocket tubes. We weren’t kids. I was in my early 30’s and married, making $50 dollars a week as a carpenter. The youngest member of the trio was Robert Condit, not long out of Poly, and he was a mathematical wizard. Come in for the rest of the story…….