Estes Industries is a model rocket company that was started in Denver, Colorado, USA. The company was the first to mass-produce model rocket engines with consistent and reliable performance. It is popular among hobbyists of experimental amateur rocketry for its simple and easily accessible engines, accessories, and rocket-building kits.
History
Estes Industries was founded by Vernon Estes in 1958; in 1961, the company moved to a 77-acre tract of land on the outskirts of Penrose, Colorado. In 1969, Vernon sold the company to the Damon Corporation of Needham, a company which also purchased a number of other hobby companies including a smaller competitor of Estes, Centuri Engineering of Phoenix, Arizona. Damon merged the two companies under the name Centuri Engineering. The Penrose entity continued doing business as Estes Industries. Centuri Engineering model rocket products continued to be developed, marketed and sold from the Centuri offices in Phoenix as well, although the actual manufacturing of Centuri products was soon moved to the Estes facility in Penrose. Sales of Centuri model rocket products were never as successful as Estes brand products and the Centuri Engineering offices in Phoenix were finally closed and the Centuri product line was discontinued in 1983.
Following a hostile takeover of the Damon Corporation in 1989, Estes Industries was divested and became part of Hobby Products. The business name of the company was shortened to Centuri Corporation. In 1996, Hobby Products acquired the assets of Cox Products of Corona, California, a company involved with the design and manufacture of model airplanes and glow-fuel model airplane engines. Cox's assets were moved to the Estes facility. In 2002, the combined company was sold again and the company's name was changed to Estes-Cox Corp.
On August 30, 2002, Barry Tunick, who had been the chief executive officer since 1991, acquired Estes-Cox Corporation from the private equity fund, TCW Capital, for the sum of $15 million. On January 15, 2010, Estes-Cox was acquired by Hobbico, Inc. On January 10, 2018, Hobbico filed for bankruptcy protection under the auspices of the United States Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. As a result of the bankruptcy, Estes-Cox was sold to Estes Industries LLC on April 12, 2018.
Accomplishments
Mabel
Vern Estes created "Mabel". "Mabel" was a machine designed to safely and inexpensively manufacture model rocket engines for Model Missiles Incorporated, primarily using compressed air for machine operations, effectively eliminating the risk of electrical sparks inadvertently igniting rocket propellant. Mabel was capable of producing a completed model rocket engine every 5-1/2 seconds. The operation began with an engine casing tube being loaded onto a rotating table. The table then advanced through multiple stations where the nozzle, propellant, delay and ejection components were added. A paper end cap was then cut from a roll of heavy paper tape and inserted to retain the loose ejection charge. The completed engine was then ejected from the table, sent through the printer and dropped into the finished engine box below.
Indoor launch of model rockets in Astrodome
Along with several smaller rockets, Estes sponsored an indoor launch of a model of a Saturn V at halftime of the BluebonnetBowl in the Houston Astrodome on December 31, 1969.
Estes rockets
Estes produced a wide variety of rocket model kits, normally using paperboard tubing for the fuselage and balsa wood for fins and nose cones. Early models tended to be relatively simple in design terms, differing in terms of size, number of stages and recovery method. The first kit offered by Estes was the Astron Scout (Rocket Kit K-1) and sold for $ .70. This kit was followed by the Astron Mark (K-2) and the Astron Space Plane (K-3). A more advanced rocket, the Astron X-Ray, featured a see-through plastic payload compartment. Another particularly well-known design from this era was the Camroc, a small camera that replaced the nose cone of larger models that was designed to take a single image on a small disk of film when the motor had burned out and the rocket was facing downward. The Cineroc used a small movie camera that could be launched from larger rockets, taking a series of frames as the rocket ascended. In the 1960s, Estes featured scale models patterned after the popular NASA designs such as the Gemini-Titan and the Saturn-V manned rockets.