Big Red 🚀 Shred

And the rocket’s red glare… bursting in air ♫ ♪

My red fiberglass + aluminum rocket disintegrated overhead on a N5800 CStar motor at BALLS 31, thematic for the Fourth of July. Here’s the video compilation.

At Max Q with 32g of acceleration, the airframe buckled at its midpoint (the avionics bay coupler should have been longer), and the carbon fiber nose cone collapsed soon thereafter (too shallow of a winding angle). This led to a RUD in the sky, shearing off of all three aluminum fins and shredding the parachute. Both video cameras sheared off as well into free fall. I recovered one, but the video cam filled its memory before launch due to various launch delays (big disappointment, as I would have loved to have seen the rocket cam’s view of the mayhem!).

Bottom line: this monster motor shreds over 90% of minimum diameter airframe attempts, and I learned a lot from mine.

Photo sequence below…