reffi's video on GoFast 2014 rocket

The GoFast 2014 rocket officially set a new world record on July 14, 2014 as the highest and fastest amateur rocket ever launched into space.

Analysis of the data from the recovered military grade Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) that flew onboard shows that the GoFast rocket reached 385,800 feet above mean sea level (73.1 miles) and hit a top speed of 3,580 miles per hour. The old record held by the CSXT’s GoFast 2004 rocket was 72 miles with a top speed of 3,420 mph.

The GoFast 2014 IMU had flown successfully on four commercial space missions at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico and was calibrated using C-Band transponder US Army radar tracking data prior to its flight into space on the GoFast rocket July 14, 2014. Statistical analysis of the WSMR flights and the GoFast 2014 launch verifies the 73.1 miles attained by the GoFast rocket has a variation of 0.6 miles with a confidence level of 95%.

Congratulations to everyone for a job well done! Thank you so much for everyone’s participation and endless hours making this launch a success.

GoFast 2014 list of accomplishments;

· World record highest altitude rocket launch
· World record fastest speed rocket launch
· First photo taken from space onboard an amateur rocket
· Second amateur rocket in history to reach space

385 800 feet =
117.59184 kilometers

How close does an object have to be to earth to be pulled by gravity?
I am not talking about partial gravity like the earth's pull on the moon, I mean gravity enough to make the object fall and hit the ground.

Think of it this way, up to what altitude can someone throw an object (say a cellphone) and it will hit the earth.

Must be less than 400km (altitude of ISS, or else it would've fallen from the sky).

Mark Eichenlaub, PhD student in Physics
118 upvotes by Giordon Stark (PhD Candidate at UChicago, B.S. from Caltech. A... (more) ), Leo C. Stein (Ph.D. from MIT, B.S. from Caltech. Specializing... (more) ), Frank Heile (PhD in Physics from Stanford University), (more)

This question doesn't have a direct answer because, for lack of a less-direct way of saying it, that's not the way it works. If there were no atmosphere, you could have the ISS be just above the surface of the Earth, high enough only to clear the mountains. On the other hand, you could have something as far out as the moon, and if it weren't going fast enough and in the right direction, it would still fall back down. The ISS doesn't stay up because of how high it is, but because of a combination of that and how fast it's going.

[...]

Malcolm Sargeant, Trained as chemist moved into computers
2 upvotes by Ed Caruthers (PhD and post-doc work in Physics at UT Austin. ... (more) ) and Shreyas Basarge.

To be in Freefall, "defying gravity" you would need to be in orbit, the minimum safe orbit would be somewhere above 300 miles above the surface at 15,000 mph.

Kshitij Tyagi
1 upvote by Stephen Anthony Williams.

There will exist a neutral point between Earth and Moon where the gravity from the two objects will cancel exactly. There will be no effective gravitational force, and a body at rest can stay at rest.
This distance will be approximately 340,000 km from the surface of Earth (along the line joining Earth's center to Moon's center). [src: What is the Earth Moon neutral point?]

Ashoka Jadhavar
Gravity exists everywhere in the universe and is the most important force affecting all matter in space. In fact, without gravity, all matter would fly apart and everything would cease to exist.
Gravity is the attractive force between two objects at a fixed distance r. The strength of gravity is proportional to the mass of the two objects and inversely related the distance between them. A larger massed object has a greater gravitational force than a smaller massed object does which explains the difference between the gravitational field of the Earth and Moon. The force of gravity between two objects decreases rapidly at a rate of 1/r2. Thus, the gravitational force of two equal masses 1 meter apart is 100 times stronger than if the masses were 10 meters apart. Using the two parameters, mass and distance, we can understand how gravity operates in the universe and causes objects to appear as though they are experiencing zero gravity in space.

It follows an inverse square law. The strength of gravity is proportional to 1/r^2 (where r is the distance).

Whatever number you put in for r, the result will never be zero.

The first successful orbital launch was of the Soviet unmanned Sputnik 1 ("Satellite 1") mission on 4 October 1957. The satellite weighed about 83 kg (183 lb), and is believed to have orbited Earth at a height of about 250 km (160 mi).

Outer space, or simply just space, is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth.[1] It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles, predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, neutrinos, dust and cosmic rays. The baseline temperature, as set by the background radiation from the Big Bang, is 2.7 kelvin (K).[2] Plasma with a number density of less than one hydrogen atom per cubic metre and a temperature of millions of kelvin in the space between galaxies accounts for most of the baryonic (ordinary) matter in outer space; local concentrations have condensed into stars and galaxies. In most galaxies, observations provide evidence that 90% of the mass is in an unknown form, called dark matter, which interacts with other matter through gravitational but not electromagnetic forces.[3][4] Data indicate that the majority of the mass-energy in the observable Universe is a poorly understood vacuum energy of space which astronomers label dark energy.[5][6] Intergalactic space takes up most of the volume of the Universe, but even galaxies and star systems consist almost entirely of empty space.

There is no firm boundary where space begins. However the Kármán line, at an altitude of 100 km (62 mi) above sea level,[7] is conventionally used as the start of outer space in space treaties and for aerospace records keeping.

The Civilian Space eXploration Team, known as CSXT, is a team of around 30 civilians interested in private spaceflight. The team was created by Ky Michaelson. Having conducted multiple rocket launches in an attempt to establish altitude records, CSXT became the first entity to officially launch an amateur rocket into space on May 17 2004, with the successful launch of its "GoFast" rocket to 116 km (72 miles) altitude, an altitude verified by FAA analysis of the team's flight data.[1]

Prior privately funded space launches were achieved by the Orbital Sciences Pegasus, and many amateur teams have made unverified claims of rocket flights exceeding the boundary of space.[1]

The GoFast 2014 rocket officially set a new world record on July 14, 2014 as the highest and fastest amateur rocket ever launched into space. Analysis of the data from the recovered military grade Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) that flew onboard shows that the GoFast rocket reached 385,800 feet above mean sea level (73.1 miles) and hit a top speed of 3,580 miles per hour.[12]