Big BALLS project

The RocketMavericks crew is cooking up a big project for BALLS in September, perhaps the largest two-stage hobbyist rocket launch ever. Motors are being poured, and graphite nozzles turned in various States, and it will all come together for a Mach 3 space shot, with on-board video of course.

For a sense of scale, this rocket will be over 20 feet tall. Here is the upper stage pre-paint. The booster thrust is 4x that of a cruise missile booster. The upper stage is 2x.

From the latest RocketMavericks newsletter:
“A group of MAVERICKS are pulling together to develop an extreme altitude 2- stage experimental rocket to be flown at BALLS 17. The airframe will fly a full Q motor that will stage between 35-50K feet to an air-start of a P motor, using a new proprietary experimental forward closure igniter. Anticipated apogee will be somewhere between 75 – 90K feet MSL.”