Rockoons and Model Rockets in Space...

[Hospital_Rocket]

I am going to post this in a couple of places as I am honestly interested in
how it may be received...

Take a peek @ https://fly.hiwaay.net/~bbrown/index.htm

It looks like the team that did this is amateur, however I am not certain how any organizational bylaws and the like may apply. So far Item 5 of the NAR code only states a rocket will be launched from a vertical assembly and a blast deflector must be used to make sure no fire results from the exhaust plume. Well, if it is in a gondola hanging from a balloon 20,000' straight up, both of those points could be argued. Similar reasoning might be applied
to the Tripoli code where applicable.

Of course there would need to be some really serious aviation safety concerns, yet it seems like a check of a challenge for a HPR team to assemble something like this for a try at space.

Any takers?

 

[Stymye]

Rockoons have been attempted by a number of amateur groups
since the 50's, and Nasa ofcourse
the Huntsville group comes to mind
apparently beginning with a few attempts at the old Spears range (where MC2 flys now) called project HALO
mabey someone else can clarify better

a relativly short launch window was effect but I don't think it involves Nar or Tripoli regulation so to speak

from what I understand when the balloon reached the stratosphere it became brittle and was easily popped by the rocket pasing thru it ,most attempts were hybrids using nitrous and asplalt
compounds . the thin air allows for some serious altitude

I learned a little about Rockoons when I did some research on the old Spears range in Manchester TN,
It was originaly a tripoli group
thats annother interesting story, but I'll stick to the subject

 

[Justy]

There's even an X-Prize team planning to use a rockoon, The DaVinci Project.

 

[rocketmanMV]

There is also a group in Massachusetts working with the same concept.

 

[Mark Clark]

For BALLS we had a group contact us about doing a rocket from a balloon. I told them if they could guarantee it would be over the launch site they could do it. We have a limited radius we can launch from.
They could not do this.

On another note. I have somewhere pictures from Lucerne of a two stage I to I launched from a balloon. A tower was suspended under the balloon. It was adsoultly dead calm and it was right over the range head when the motor was lit. Late 80s, early 90's time frame.

Mark