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Comment by cconcepts | Hacker News Reader

400 feet doesnt seem very high (to a bystander like me). I made a 19mm diameter sugar rocket with my kids, tied it to a bamboo stick for stability and electrically started it. The thing went so high that we visually lost sight of it.

Is this because my power to weight ratio is so much lower?

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If you enjoy fetching your rocket from a tree you can go higher.

Back when I was involved with some of the higher power aspect of the hobby(J/K/L/M class) we'd go our to the desert where retrieval was a lot easier. Even out M class stuff rarely topped 1500ft.

Minimum diameter can go much, much higher but usually your flight waiver has a fixed ceiling that you don't want to exceed.

I'd like to eventually start working with those more high-powered motors, but for a first flight I wanted to keep things manageable.

... and I also had a 400 ft limit with my permit.

Honestly a little surprised you need a permit for the standard engine power stuff. It's been ages since I've been involved with the hobby but we used to not need one until we stepped above E class.

Bigger stuff is fun but also hits the pocketbook a little bit more.

I'm in the DC area where anything that goes up in the air is taken very seriously.

High Power = H Impulse and above. Also, if your M class flights rarely went over 1500ft those rockets must have been HUGE. I did my L3 on a baby M (M2250 - 9.4% M) and went nearly 20k ft AGL and Mach 1.9.

Hypothetically -- if you just drive a boat out to international waters, can you launch a mini-rocket into space without any legal issues?

The FCC doesn't tend to agree: https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/20/18150684/swarm-technolog...

I'm still somewhat annoyed that didn't lead to a complete blackballing of Swarm. A <$1M fine for a VC-funded space start-up actually doesn't seem that large, and I bet they probably saved a bunch of money by not following the proper procedures anyway, which lowers the actual impact of that fine anyway. It sets a bad precedent for other New Space companies that might be looking for a shortcut.

Yeah taking the Uber route on regulation compliance does not work for space travel.

On what grounds do they punish you? Why do FCC laws apply to international waters?

Different aerodynamics probably had a little impact but it's mostly just a much better power to weight ratio. It helps that you didn't launch a raspberry pi and battery :)

That's exactly it. This thing was pretty heavy with a battery, Pi, sensors, mounting components, etc. I used an Estes D12-5 engine, which is fairly powerful but there are wayyy more powerful model rocket motors out there that I'd like to try in the future with this.

If you’d like inspiration for something larger, check out a rocket[0] a friend and I designed/built/launched earlier this year. Basically a combination of a drone and a rocket, rocket part takes it up, drone part handles the landing. I can share a lot more photos, videos, and design characteristics if interested (contact info on my profile page).

[0] https://www.instagram.com/p/B87uohIJcik/

Thanks for clarifying. As a total noob I was staggered by those little sugar rockets, as soon as the thing left the ground I thought "uh oh, what have I done?"

Haha that's awesome. Do you have a link for a good tutorial on them?

https://youtu.be/12fR9neVnS8

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