Canon EOS 5D Mark II
ƒ/7.1
180 mm
1/3,200
400

My biggest rocket and motor to date, now with video.

Kickin’ up dirt and sparks in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. (full size photo)

And 0.5 seconds later, the plume of fire was 80 ft. tall.

26 responses to “V2.1 Blastoff”

  1. Beautiful.

    It looks so perfect; so symmetrical, so shiny, sharp and sparkling that it looks like an illustration.

  2. Wow what a fun day at the office!!

  3. oh well, that’s a lot of rocket!

  4. Guessing what kind of solid propellent is used here, maybe some zinc/sulfur mix?

  5. Amazing as always Steve, congrats on the perfect flight!

  6. Wow. For a guy who knows nothing about this stuff it’s great to have something for scale. In this case the camera…

  7. thanks y’all. It was very exciting….

    Rapadma: It is a soild AP motor with a tilted fuel/oxidizer mix and embedded titanium sponge that melts and turns white hot. Here is a short propellant primer I wrote for ScienceBlogs.

  8. If I weren’t the product of a bankrupt U.S. educational system, I’d likely be able to calculate how far you were from this firing with a 180 mm focal length. It’s a gorgeous shot.

  9. Where does the rocket end up…?

  10. That’s gotta sound amazing. Are you shooting video too? Is this event the same as or overlap with BALLS? Is anybody launching anything this … characteristic?
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevlar/2900384968/

  11. Duh. Yes, now I see the video link. Amazing. I like the 2 cam perspective. Wish I’d done that for the X-Wing. There’s never too much coverage.

  12. Yeah, that is just one bad ass motor. Nice job on that.

  13. Thanks so much Sir! Here we don’t have all that chances to buy stuff so, sometimes we manufacture the motor. 🙂

  14. Completely worth the performance hit.

  15. that is quite a kick!

  16. Wow… Obama just mentioned the early history of the V2 effort in the U.S. and then the addition of video cameras to our rockets to take the first images of Earth.

    Photoblog from for the National Medal of Science ceremony…Craig Venter just got one of them! woot!

  17. My buddy Erik just posted some cool shots from the weekend.

    Changing the redundant flight computer power rails so that the pyro channels will draw current from a fresh, dedicated battery…

    The nosecone recovery… it drifted a fair bit farther with its own paratrooper parachute:

  18. and now she’s flying through hyperspace…

  19. I am very happy tou have liked it Steve. I will maybe (if a good idea comes) do something still better than this one. Have a good time.

    denis

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