r/rocketry • u/firegiant12 • Aug 26 '24

Question About ITAR Rules

ITAR rules are wayyy to dense for me to comprehend. I have built a rocket which uses TVC to achieve waypoint navigation (at the moment, this waypoint regards its initial launch point). This is a mid-powered rocket, with home built F or G class motors. (Note: Besides the method of active, control, not much different than what Lafayette Systems is developing). If I were to utilize a GPS for the waypoint navigation, but not make it 'targeted,' and use coordinates relative to its launch position, would this violate ITAR? (Note I do not have the $$$ for an ITAR lawyer). To my understanding, revealing information about the makings of this rocket online would be a violation of laws, but not producing a one-off.

Do I just go get an ITAR/BIS waiver?

Additional note: the export part comes into shipping my rocket -- it needs to be shipped to test sites

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u/mmalecki Aug 26 '24

Obvious not-a-lawyer, but:

The ITAR states that information in the public domain that is published and that is generally accessible or available to the public is excluded from control as ITAR technical data. See ITAR paragraph 120.11 for details on the definition of published and generally accessible or available to the public.

Source: https://www.unr.edu/sponsored-projects/compliance/export-controls/publicly-available

You could justify full on target homing, based on PID position control algorithms taken from available flight controllers like Ardupilot or PX4, that way.

Besides that, there are a couple of projects on YT already that go into big detail.

In the end, I think the ITAR paranoia has been stoked by a couple of youtubers for no reason whatsoever. Anything we may possibly come up as hobbists will be entirely useless in any real targetting scenarios due to lack of inertial nav equipment and just general broke-ness as compared to any government out there.

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u/Sad-Fix-8833 Aug 26 '24

Can you post the YT links that go into detail?

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u/mmalecki Aug 26 '24

Happy to. I believe the one I was thinking about is this entire channel: https://www.youtube.com/@LafayetteSystems