An indispensable reference. An excellent introduction to model rocketry in its various forms, clear enough for the beginner to understand and apply, but complete enough for experienced rocketeers to learn and get ideas from. I agree with the review in Sport Rocketry.

Besides the fact that Tim Van Milligan sent me a personal email telling me the order was on its way within hours of my order placed on the Apogee website... Besides the fact that the book was in my hands on Monday after a Friday afternoon order... This is, without a doubt, the New Testament to the Bible of Rocketry. _Model Rocket Design and Construction_ should be rubber-banded to all copies of G. Harry Stine's _The Handbook of Model Rocketry_. The best analogy I can make is this: Stine's book introduces the reader to a vast underground cavern, ripe for exploration and discovery. Milligan's book shines a light on all the gems to be found in the cavern, and opens up great big new passages for the intrepid explorer. I take Milligan's book with me everywhere and have dedicated a page in the back to my own handwritten notes - "CHAD staging - investigate" "investigate homemade tubes" "look for built-up fin plans and application;" "PAYLOADS;" "order more stuff from Tim!;" "homemade cluster rocket;" "tracking powder;" Features: The chapter on stability alone finally gave me an instinctual understanding of model rocket stability and what affects it. Without resorting to RockSim, I feel like I can design stable models from pencil and paper. 3 chapters on recovery, a whole chapter dedicated to clustering, a list of cool patents and other resources for design... Enough on features... Execution: The photos and diagrams invaluably illustrate the concepts explained in the book. Tumble recovery is one example - after looking at two diagrams and reading a short paragraph, I now know more about tumble recovery for booster stages than I ever did before. The prose style is smooth, informative and always light, almost exactly in the manner of Stine. The chapters build on one another, but the first chapter, introducing concepts and definitions of the sport, serves as an appetizer for the rest of the book - lots of "ooh, I want to read about that," and "wow - I never knew you could do that!" Overall Value: Like I said above - this should be rubber-banded to every copy of Stine's book. In fact, if you have a youngster who's interested in the sport but feels intimidated by the _Handbook_, give him or her Model Rocket Design and Construction to read first. You're going to get pestered and harangued for launches, help and more body tubes for more and more ideas... Not only that, but I've discovered that I could also be satisfied by model rockets and investigating their possibilities for the rest of my life, never moving into HPR at all, and feel perfectly happy, simply because Tim's book reveals so much to design and explore.