For high power rocketry enthusiasts, Nevada's Black Rock Dry Lake is unmatched in its sheer vastness—400 square miles of barren, flat lake bed and shadowed by distant mountains. The site is so imposing, in fact, that it’s one of the few places in the continental United States where even the largest rockets are dwarfed by the scale of the terrain. As such, its remoteness makes it the perfect location for what is billed as the nation’s  premier experimental rocket launch—BALLS16.

LAUNCH Magazine was not only at Black Rock to cover the event, we also sponsored one of the most challenging projects there—the attempt by Team-SCAM of Indiana to reach 84,000 feet altitude (just over 16 miles) with a two-stage rocked dubbed “Little O.”  Did they make it? You can find out in the January/February issue of LAUNCH, on newsstands the last week in December. Included in our comprehensive coverage of BALLS16 will be Team-SCAM leader Joe Isca’s behind-the-scenes account of this truly extraordinary high altitude challenge.