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Marc Giauque ReportingSome of them will go well over a mile into the air.
Model rockets will start flying off the floor of the Bonneville Salt Flats today. It's part of the Utah Rocket Club's annual Hellfire event.
You probably know how this will end. This is the sound of a 7-foot tall rocket jetting almost out of site from Utah's west desert. The rocket eventually deploys a chute that carries it safely to the ground. It's an event that requires FAA clearance.
"We have a standing ceiling with the FAA to 10,000 feet above the ground. We do have some guys that want to go higher."
Neal Baker will be flying some of his rockets this weekend. He gets a kick out of building them.
"Building something that goes close to the speed of sound or faster and go up that high and actually be able to recover it safely."
Baker is a member of The Utah Rocket Club, which hosts the annual event, far from where the road ends on the Salt Flats. Miles away from well...anything.
Some rockets are kits, others..."A lot of the guys just build rockets from scratch." Bruce Bell says, though, they still have to pass inspection and computer simulation before they fly. He's got a basement full of past projects.
"This here was called a Nike smoke. Another one here that has an attachment on the side of the rocket, and it actually carries."
Most of these enthusiasts, by the way, are not scientists. The exceptions might be the ones who mix their own fuels.
Bell admits things don't always go as expected. "We have almost at each launch what is called lawn darting. It just comes down because the ejection doesn't kick the parachute for whatever reason."
Still, Bell says, other problems are rare.
He gets another thrill from visiting the Salt Flats by the way. He says he's had his Dodge Caravan up to 140 miles per hour. "I think it still had another 10 to 15 miles an hour left in it."
