Rocket Candy - Applications

Applications

Rocket candy is also occasionally known as "caramel candy", a term that was popularized by Bertrand R. Brinley, in his pioneering book on amateur rocketry, Rocket Manual for Amateurs, published in 1960. This propellant was used in some of the amateur rockets described by Homer Hickam in his best-selling memoir Rocket Boys.

Rocket candy was also employed in a small amateur rocket described by Lt. Col. Charles M. Parkin in a lengthy Electronics Illustrated article that continued over several issues, beginning in July 1958. Parkin described how to prepare the propellant mixture by using an electric frying pan as a heat source for the melting operation. This article was reprinted in Parkin's book, The Rocket Handbook for Amateurs, which was published in 1959. Parkin's article contributed to the increasing popularity of the rocket candy propellant among amateur rocket groups beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Today there is a program called the Sugar Shot to Space Program. The “underlying goal of the Sugar Shot to Space program is to loft a rocket powered by a ‘sugar propellant’ into space.” The goal is for a rocket with a sugar-based motor to make it into space, or 100 km (62.137 mi) high. The Double Sugar Shot rocket has reached 33 km, or one third of the goal altitude. The Mini Sugar Shot rocket, a prototype of the Extreme Sugar Shot rocket, reached an altitude of 12 km before a catastrophic motor malfunction occurred. The Extreme Sugar Shot rocket, the rocket expected to meet the goal of entering space, has not yet been completed and is a work in progress.