In article , nospam@
127.0.0.1 says...

An amateur rocket team (AeroPac 100k Team) has officially won the
Carmack Prize for being the first amateurs to launch and successfully
record a rocket flight above 100 kft AGL.

Details of their report can be found he

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7w...EdKOHROcGRGbDA

Very interesting details in the above doc. It's a bit encouraging to
see that they won the prize with a rocket that had total impulse much
smaller than many previous high altitude rockets. The metric they used
for this was interesting.

Also interesting was their emphasis on "off the shelf" engines,
materials, electronics, and etc. Very few components on their vehicle
required what I'd consider a "machine shop" to create.

Congrats to the AeroPac 100k Team!

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer