We've flown model rockets built from kits many times. It's fun. But it's not as satisfying as it would be to do something like in October Sky. Could we really do that?

Well, not exactly. From what we can tell, it wouldn't be legal now. And it's a lot more dangerous than they made it look in the movie (although if you're comparing it to working in a coal mine...)

But how close could we come? The rockets we've been flying consist of:

1. A body tube (light and strong)
2. Some fins
3. A launch lug (bit of drink straw)
4. A nose cone
5. A recovery system (drag or parachute or tumble, which is to say "none")
6. And rocket engine

And to launch them you need

1. A launch pad
2. A launch controller

The first five should be relatively easy to "homebrew". The fins, launch lug, and drag are trivial. We should be able to make our own body tube by wrapping paper & glue around a oiled dowel or something. And a nose cone could be carved by hand or we could maybe get the lathe working.

The big challenge would be the engines. So of course that's what we're going to start on. We could (and did) look up ways to make them, but rather than just copying instructions off the internet (which can be dangerous and may not work) we decided to develop the technology ourselves by doing a series of controlled tests.