More magnificent desolation

Black Rock is a dry lake bed in the high desert of northwestern Nevada. It is one of the best sites for extreme sport and amateur rocketry and is home of TRA's yearly Balls experimental launch.

A reader (who shall remain anonymous, unless he tells me otherwise) pointed me to an interesting web page describing how sport/amateur rocketry led to the discovery of a possible impact crater in Nevada's Black Rock desert. Evidently rocket scientists can double as amateur geologists. I won't try to paraphrase the website, but I encourage you to take a look-see.

The following is an annotated photo of the eroded shatter cones that prompted the investigation of the impact crater. The people in the photo are members of the Stratofox Aerospace Tracking Team, a volunteer group who supports space launch efforts for amateur and startup-commercial groups including the Civilian Space eXploration Team (CSXT) and Paragon Astronautics. (as usual click to get the larger version)


On May 17th, 2004, the Civilian Space eXploration Team’s GoFast rocket reached an official altitude of 72 miles, making it the first Civilian and Amateur rocket to successfully exceed the 62 mile (100km) international definition of space.