Rocket fired at airliner in Texas

[Angus]

If it is a question whether a layman or a student group could crew up and build a missile that reaches some 10 k or be it 30 k, my opinion is....yes.
I'll give you an example of what is easily possible if you have the brains:


Some weeks ago I had a foreign visitor. He had with him a RC aircraft small enough to fit in a car. It was home made.
On the nose there was a camera. The camera could broadcast through a little antenna, so one could view it from the "cockpit" so to say.
The view was transmitted through glasses, and in broad daylight one would need to put something over the head so that the sunlight would not interrupt.
For me, as a "sharer" of one of the glasses (the pilot had the other pair), it was like something of a gadgety Bond-Movie. Totally crazy. The guy took this thing up and buzzed around my cattle, then had to outmaneuveread/outran some birds (in heat they were).
A rocket flying up to a certain alt in no problem. It is being done with as simple a fuel as sugar as a main base. What is scary for me is the possible combination.....an RC can easily do the same interception.

[Stalwart]

High power model rocketry commonly exceeds 10K.  But I think it would be hard to conceal a large rocket like that.  Of course, no one was looking for it until afterwards.

[fudgums]

Declare war on texas?

[guncrasher]

So whay do we get if we win?  Steers?


Semp

[Shifty]

I doubt it.  

If you look at the history of the bottle rocket and similar devices, and compare it to the history of roof coverings, I think you'll find that rockets and flammable roof coverings have existed and been used at the same time (and in the same places) for several hundred years (maybe even longer).

I'd also think that if the research was done, we'd find wooden shingles have been around longer than flying fireworks.  If the shingles did them in, would bottle-rockets have ever been invented?

What you say makes sense. However both wooden shingels and fireworks have been around longer than building codes and municipal regulations. When we moved to Plano TX in the summer of 1966 I was about to enter the 3rd grade. The town was very small with a 2A school system. It was just slightly larger than the typical rural Texas farming town. By the time I graduated in the spring of 1977 the community had boomed approaching 100K in population. My graduating class was over 900. During this boom a lot of money moved into the town. Instead of it being the home of your typical North Texas good ole boy it was the home to a lot of professional types that had transplanted from the Northeast. The city became the home to a lot of wealthy people as well who decided how they wanted new houses built and neighborhoods to appear. I have no doubt these very same people decided that bottle rockets were to be banned the very first time one of their million dollars homes went up in flames.They had the wealth and power to make it so. The Plano of today and the Plano I spent my childhood in are two complete different communities. The wooden shingels came along after I left and were a decision based on pleasing the eye more than function. The old tar shingles like the house I grew up in didn't fit the new wealthy Plano. They didn't catch fire from a stray bottle rocket either though.

[mtnman]

It sounds like they didn't like bottle rockets/fireworks, and needed an excuse to get them banned.  

It sounds like legislature did in the bottle-rockets.  And people probably actually voted for the legislators.

They could have just as easily banned the wooden shingles, after all...  Or treated the wooden shingles to make them fire retardant.  Or made it law to use fire retardant roof coverings.

After all, there are many ways for a dwelling to catch fire, and bottle rockets are probably responsible for a comparably small percentage of torched homes.  To ban them for that reason, would seem to set precedence for banning other things with an equal or greater chance of igniting a house.  A candle for example.  Or electricity.  Or gas/charcoal grills.  I'm curious now, is grilling legal in Plano?  Are candles?

Where I live, they even make clothing that's fire-retardant, pass laws to make folks' (kids at least) bedding and clothes fire retardant, and make laws to make human dwellings pass fire codes.

They also make it illegal to purchase, sell, or ignite "flying" fireworks, unless you have a special permit (which they give you when you ask for it, pay the several dollar fee, and fill out the form).