The nozzles and mixing chamber would have to be metal, but the body would have to be lighter, as would the tanks..preferably lexan or something like a carbon fiber composite, formed around a vac or blow molded liner. properly shielded you could have the nozzle in front of the tanks to reduce the shift in moment as the tanks emptied..., a la early Goddard. if ceramics were used for the shield, with a thin beryllium bronze cup as a heat dump... you could probably keep things sane until the temperature started to drop precipitously at about 40,000 feet, after which heat dissipation is not a real problem. I also think that at some point it would be cool to try and launch from a high flying balloon or aircraft, possibly even an RC craft. Sigh....... M At 04:39 PM 6/28/02 -0700, you wrote: >I take it that you'd want a precision molded model rocket... > >I just happen to know someone in the plastics industry. Too bad the molds >cost so much, or I'm sure I'd be able to get a cheap production run off. > >Why are the molded parts neccessary, exactly? I bet we could get this off >using the old style waxed paper system, so long as we had some ceramic blast >cones and combustion chambers... > >I like this idea... Maybe next summer I'll even be able to get somewhere >with it :) > >--Brendan -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.