Category Archives: Rocketry

Hybrid rocket built by Texas students sets an altitude record for high school launches

Chris McLeod, instructor for the rocket engineering program at Brazoswood High School in Clute, Texas near Houston, sent me the news that the 2022 senior “Goddard Rocket Team”

designed and built an SRAD [student researched and designed] hybrid rocket which launched to a verified 45,482′ AGL (49,523′ MSL). This came within 1% of the 50,000′ ceiling at WSMR [White Sands Missile Range].

The Horizon 1 rocket used  nitrous oxide with a solid 3D printed fuel grain.

The team set a world record for high school rockets:

All information was validated by the U.S. Army at the White Sands Missile Range a few weeks later, “Brazoswood High School set a new world record for altitude achieved by a student-built, hybrid-motor propelled rocket reaching 45,482 feet above ground level, beating Fredericksburg High School’s record of 36,100 feet and earning the the SystemsGo Kepler Award.”

McLeod notes

that this rocket, from research, design, and fabrication, was all completed in just one school year, with just one chance at launch, and that the students themselves learned the machining, composites, and other fabrication required to build the vehicle.

Check out the project website, which includes details of the rocket’s design and construction and also a summary of the flight, which took place on June 26, 2022.

Here are videos of the flight and student activities before and after the launch.

See also their lessons learned and advice to those seeking to break this record.

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Video: EUROC university student rocket competition underway in Portugal

The first European Rocketry Challenge (EUROC) inter-collegiate student rocketry competition is being held in Ponte de Sor, Portugal this week (October 21-25). EUROC is

the first university rocket launch competition in Europe, which seeks to stimulate engineering students to design, build and launch their own vehicles

EUROC was inspired by the Spaceport America Cup college rocketry competition held annually at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

The Copenhagen Suborbitals amateur rocket group is reporting on the competition among six teams:

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TMRO Orbit 12.05 – “How to launch and land a model Falcon Heavy”

The latest episode of TMRO.tv Space program is now available: How to launch and land a model Falcon Heavy – Orbit 12.05

Joe Barnard of BPS.space joins us to talk about his work in making model rockets emulate larger, liquid fueled vehicles such as Falcon and Electron. He has created many amazing models and has been working on thrust vector control (TVC) steering of models as well as being able to stage and even land model rockets. This is his story.

** More about changes at TMRO.tv:

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Videos: DIY rocketeer profile, Retrieving a big wet rocket, Blue Origin’s giant lifter, & More about Virgin Galactic’s SS2

Some miscellaneous rocket/space related videos:

** The DIY Rocketeer Building SpaceX Replicas of Self-Landing Rockets: A Motherboard profile of Joe Barnard, who is about developing model rockets with vectored thrust and landing capabilities (see posts here and here):

Joe Barnard left his background in videography and music production to launch his life of amateur rocketry, and he shares his DIY adventures in building rockets on his YouTube channel BPS.space.

** SpaceX CRS-16 booster recovery: Reports from www.USLaunchReport.com on what has been happening with that SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage that landed in the water during the launch of a Dragon cargo ship to the ISS:

**** SpaceX CRS-16 Booster Towed To Port 12-07-2018

**** SpaceX – Rise Of The Machines

** What went wrong: Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, explains what caused the booster to land offshore:

** Blue Origin’s New Glenn: And here Dodd profiles Jeff Bezos’s giant rocket:

** Commercial astronauts visit space: Scott Manley describes the significance of the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo flight this week:

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Video: First flight of BPS Space’s Falcon Heavy model rocket

I’ve posted a few times about Joe Barnard‘s scale model rocket projects that seek to emulate realistically the takeoff and landing characteristics of SpaceX rockets. Here is a report on the first flight of the Falcon Heavy model:

Find more about Joe’s projects at BPS.space.

You can also support his efforts at BPS.space is creating Rockets | Patreon.

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