"It was very loud and (had a) really bright flame," Mueller said. "The flame itself was about 20 feet long, which is as long as the rocket itself. It was beautiful."

The craft soared so high that the group had to obtain a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration. As planned, the rockets came down on Bureau of Land Management land away from the spectators. Also, spotters were out to keep people from wandering into the region at the wrong time.

Omer, who built the airframe as his senior-year project, thinks the design could reach 150,000 or 200,000 feet. He is now going on to other research in pursuit of his master's degree, but remains interested in future USU rockets.

Students are scratching their heads about what went wrong. He noted that with another launch in December 2003, the recovery system also failed.

At that time, he said, "at least the chutes came out when they were supposed to. We had a different failure that time — the (parachute) lines got tangled." This time, the rocket was falling so fast that once the parachute came out, it broke the rocket apart. The recovery system was designed to withstand the pressure of 12 times the force of gravity. An accelerometer on board could only measure up to 65 G's, and that's where it became saturated.

"It generally went pretty good," said Marlow Moser, research professor in the mechanical and aerospace engineering department of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He and four students drove 27 hours straight to reach the competition with their entry.

"We think we know what went wrong with ours, and the recovery always seems to be the hardest part," he said. "Most of the students are interested in the fire part of it and (the recovery system) doesn't get as much attention."

With both sides figuring out what went wrong, students are getting a practical education in — well, rocket science.

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com