Intense Rocket Stress Test

0.25 seconds later, you can see the 8′ tall steel launch rail at pad #23 tossed to the side from the kick of the thrust.

I was curious to see how strong this rocket really was.

I originally built her with Kevlar and fiberglass-epoxy wrappings. She last disappeared from sight (supersonic at the time on a L730 motor), and had a ballistic nosedive somewhere on Snow Ranch. She was discovered a year later by the cattle ranchers. So I sawed off the mangled coupler, and rebuilt a new upper body for her, but left the bottom half of the rocket untouched (the fins and motor mount were as they were found. Thinking the rocket to be unbreakable, I tried an extreme stress test yesterday – the massive acceleration of a Cesaroni Aerospace J1520 Vmax motor, delivering 375 lbs of thrust in an intense burst.

Here is a short ground video.

First she knocks the launch rail completely over, and then the blast reaches the ground videocam on mini-tripod about 20 ft. away, and knocks it over as well.

Soon after launch, you can hear Erik’s chaser rocket. There was a third videocam on my rocket that was to record the whole event from above, but alas, it was not properly armed. Doh!