OpenRocket - an Open Source model rocket simulator

OpenRocket is a free, fully featured model rocket simulator that allows you to design and simulate your rockets before actually building and flying them.

The main features include:

* Six-degree-of-freedom flight simulation
* Automatic design optimization
* Realtime simulated altitude, velocity and acceleration display
* Staging and clustering support
* Cross-platform (Java-based)


Read more and downloads:
http://openrocket.sourceforge.net

I used to do environmental remediation (that's a fancy title for a guy that handles toxic waste) A big chunk of the work involved analytical chemistry. We would use some of the chemical wastes to neutralize others. We also built radioactive shields and dealt with radioactive waste as well. Anyways, I worked for a guy that claimed to have made a rocket fuel out... boiling a can of evaporated milk! I don't remember what else he mixed up with it. I just remember the can of milk and getting it real hot. Not that I'd do or recommend anyone doing something that damned dangerous for a rocket when there's always Estes, but I am curious now as what this guy did. Do you have any idea about what I'm talking about? This guy was older than me and he did this in the 1950's. There were all sorts of idiots in America trying to build homemade rockets and filling up emergency rooms back then. They used mostly the obvious like gasoline, alcohol and gunpowder. But evaporated milk???

Quote from Racer Y :

there's always Estes

I used to fly these, I had about ten of them at one point; the biggest being my Optima, with about 3 inch diameter and maybe four feet long.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I used to fly these, I had about ten of them at one point; the biggest being my Optima, with about 3 inch diameter and maybe four feet long.

Yeah, my brother was into those for a while. LOL He made a rocket out of a carpet tube and paneling for fins and a disposable cup for a nose.
He put in a big motor... a "C"? or "D"?
Any ways the rocket was waaaayy too heavy. It looked like all the propellant in the rocket engine shot out one end. The nose took off in a ball of flame. The rest of the rocket just sort of sat there smoking.

We used to get model cars (remember those?) and build them modified for rocket motors. That was fun. Most of the time they just spun wildly and disintegrated
But every now and then you'd get a decent car set up and those cars would burn down the road.... maybe 70mph?