Amateur Rocket Team Claims and Wins Carmack Prize

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

Here (posted earlier today) is John Carmack's response
(reposted from the Arocket mailing list)


You win!



That is an excellent document that will be providing useful guidance to the community for many, many years. I am happy to pay out the prize money.



A couple comments:



I would have been scared for the integrity of the fin cans, but that seemed to work perfectly.



I’m not convinced that accelerometer apogee detection is ever going to be a good idea for flights this long and high. On the Armadillo rockets, we use GPS backed up by constantly adjusting timers.



John Carmack

So I guess that makes it as official as it gets.

For a history of the Carmack Prize, see this link:

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n....ws?news_id=376

A history of John Carmack is available on Wikipedia he

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack

All-in-all quite a week for Aviation & Space...

See also:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/15/us/nev...ght/index.html
http://www.usnews.com/science/news/a...rier-on-sunday

Dave