>(At the time of this writing the rocket and payload had not been recovered.)
Normally to claim these sorts of records recovery of the vehicle is required. USC RPL's Traveler III was "thought" to have reached space but they didn't turn the avionics on beforehand and therefore didn't verify or recover.
In fairness I've been across these attempts for years. I was at BALLS when the initial Traveler CATOed, I watched it from Bruno's. Today is the first I've heard of this USAFA launch. The Wired article author is most likely much less across this stuff than I am. It could just be a case of USC RPL wasn't aware of the USAFA boosted dart flight.
And I still contend that recovery is necessary. USC RPL didn't claim Traveler III "broke the record" despite having good confidence it did given it didn't suffer a RUD during boost. They only "claimed" the record when they had a successful flight AND recovery. This is pretty much SOP for high altitude record attempts in the amateur rocketry community. I suspect it USAFA had recovered their boosted dart we would have most likely heard about it.
Thanks for sharing your experience here. I'd actually love to learn more about advances made in amateur rocketry lately, if you have any good links to share.
And TRF is excessively noisy but it's the place where Jim and Kip document their work. Curt's a bit more secretive comparatively.
https://www.rocketryforum.com/
>(At the time of this writing the rocket and payload had not been recovered.)
Normally to claim these sorts of records recovery of the vehicle is required. USC RPL's Traveler III was "thought" to have reached space but they didn't turn the avionics on beforehand and therefore didn't verify or recover.