It’s finally official! The U.S. Space & Rocket Center has the Guinness World Record for “Most model rocket kits launched simultaneously.” The successful launch of 4,923 rockets was held July 16, 2019, the 50th anniversary of the launch of a Huntsville-designed Saturn V heading to the moon with the Apollo 11 astronauts aboard.
The Guinness World Record launch was part of the Rocket Center’s weeklong celebration of the Apollo 11 anniversary. In honor of the genius of the Rocket City engineers, scientists and technicians who made that launch possible, the Rocket Center attempted to launch 5,000 model rockets simultaneously to break the previous record of 4,231 model rockets launched. That record was set at Teylingen College during a European Space Science Convention in the Netherlands, in summer 2018.
To achieve the record, the Rocket Center had to: use commercially available rockets and build them following basic manufacturer guidelines; have a record number of rockets pass 30m (~100 feet) in altitude; and have an independent specialist verify the counting method.
Rocket Center staff worked with the Redstone Test Center to develop a verification method for the altitude requirement. They also partnered with the University of Alabama in Huntsville's Systems Management and Production Center to get video of the rockets passing the altitude barrier. UAH used drones and a weather balloon with a stationary camera mounted at 100 feet to verify rockets passing that altitude.
The independent specialists were a team assembled by Chris Crumbly, who was then executive director of the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation and has worked in the aerospace field for more than 30 years.
A large army of volunteers assisted Rocket Center staff in the rocket launch preparation, with 178 volunteers working 696 hours over 13 sessions to build the rockets. Twenty volunteers worked 75 hours to build the wood frames on which the rockets were placed.
Congratulations to the dedicated staff and volunteers who made this remarkable feat possible!