When I was young and stupid(ier), I made two rockets. My first rocket's names was "Alpha". The fuel that I used was sulfur and zinc dust (micrograin). Alpha was about 2 inches in diameter and five feet long. It had a mild steel nozzle and aluminum nose cone that I made myself on a lathe. The nozzle was press fit into a steel tube along with a steel end plug. The rocket weighed 20 lbs. unloaded and had about 20 lbs of propellant. Alpha had a thrust of about one ton and burned all of its fuel in roughly 0.5 seconds. Alpha was designed to reach Mach 2 and an altitude of 15,000 ft. I ignited the propellant with a nichrome coil driven by a car battery. I constructed a wooden launch rail that was mounted on a bipod. The launch rail was designed to fold up inside a car. I launched Alpha around 1971 in the Mojave desert not far from Lancaster. I transported the fuel to the launch site as separate zinc and sulfur dust components and then mixed them on site. I mixed them in a plastic garbage bag and then poured the mixed fuel into the rocket through the nozzle using a plastic funnel. I used a wooden tamper to compress the fuel dust into a solid mass and then inserted the nichrome igniter directly into the fuel. I was about 40 feet away from the rocket behind a sand dune when I launched it. I had two movie cameras filming the rocket when it launched. When I energized the igniter, nothing happened for about 20 seconds. Then the fuel detonated, the rocket was gone and wooden launch rail disintegrated. At the time, I had no clue whether the rocket actually flew or simply blew up. Later I processed the 8 mm movie film. I ran the movie, again saw it sitting on the pad and then it was instantly gone. I then went over the movie frame by frame. In one movie frame I could see the rocket in free flight with a perfectly formed plume behind it. The launch was successful. It was a miracle I survived. I also built a bigger version of Alpha named "Beta". Beta only needs to be loaded with micrograin to fly. I still have Beta today (33 years after making it) hanging from the ceiling of my garage by wires. Needless to say, I will never launch Beta. I keep Beta as a monument to my own stupidity and incredible luck of surviving Alpha.

Gary