Coolest rocketry club EVER.

[solarbird]

The Tripoli, Nebraska Rocketry Club test-fires its first medium-range ICBM!

I mean, _seriously_. This thing is 30' tall. It needs a launch tower. Which they also built!

No, these aren't photoshopped. It's really quite sad that it blows up on launch, of course.

...because _damn_. Their smaller rocket, they report, went up just fine.

Here's the whole "day of launch" page.

Comments

[pobig.livejournal.com]

Damn, this takes me back to, let's see, age 13, staying at my grandmother's place on the way back from California, plotting out a master rocket development plan in my notebook in between pleading to use the typewriter to lay out 6800 assembly programs. Ah, to be naïve and extravagantly ambitious again.

[chipmunck.livejournal.com]

*jaw dropped*... sweet...

[banner.livejournal.com]

I used to be in model rocketry, but these days to do the stuff we used to do, you have to have a permit from the BATF!! Can you believe that? Most of the engines we used are all illegal! I was told that this all happened (making it illegal) in the mid 90's, I don't know. Kind of sad. I wonder if there are still model rocketry clubs in any schools anymore?

[solarbird]

I have, in fact, just found this:

http://www.space-rockets.com/congress.html

It appears that the Patriot Act has all but killed Model Rocketry, and they're trying to get rocket engines onto the new "exceptions" list they're carving out. If you're interested, now is the time to write or call.

[solarbird]

Drr, not Patriot. Homeland Security. Regardless, the time to call is now.