Manny and Steve’s N6000 — a Mach 5 Flight!

Look at that plume-to-rocket-ratio. I was the only one close enough to capture this moment, and it was gone in a flash. I was shooting at 1/8000 secs to freeze the “faster than a speeding bullet” motion.

Just posted a video of it popping off the pad.

The rocket is all aluminum (but you can see it already blacken on the bottom half from the heat of launch), except for fiberglass nose and fins and a carbon fiber rear fin can ring. At this point in the photo, the electronics were intact and reported 87g’s of acceleration!

The nose cone collapsed inward at the Mach 4 to Mach 5 transition, and so she came back ballistic. But they recovered it all after a big of digging. Photo essay below…