At a critical juncture, Tony Alcocer and his son’s interest in flying rockets soared past the small, cardboard hobby shop rockets to handcrafted missiles made of exotic materials that fly miles into the air.

"I started seven or eight years ago with my son, who was 13 at the time. We started building cardboard rockets and we advanced past that," said Alcocer, a Santa Rosa firefighter. "It got out of hand."

VIDEO: "The Rocketeer," a video about Tony Alcocer.

Alcocer has built two dozen rockets in his two-car garage, which has been converted into a workshop.

The last flew to 63,000 feet at three times the speed of sound.

It was launched at Black Rock in the Nevada desert, where the Federal Aviation Administration has established a 100,000-foot ceiling for amateur rocketeers.

The motors are solid-state propellant, the same material that powers the Space Shuttle. Using the fuel requires permits from the state of California and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

On-board electronics will detect when a rocket hits its apex, causing it to separate into two sections and deploy the chutes.

Another transmitter or a GPS unit will track the altitude, speed and location for recovery, which can be miles from the launch pad.

"I have flown higher in altitude and faster in speed than most countries," Alcocer said.

Model rocketry is only a step below what NASA is doing, said Alcocer.

They all face the same problems of getting something up into the atmosphere, except Alcocer is looking at maybe building a rocket to survive the climb to 22,000 feet and not 22,000 miles.

As the speeds and the altitude increase, so do the challenges, particularly as speeds hit the sound barrier, which will blister paint and tear off even the most securely fastened fiberglass fins.

"Some say they have heard a little crack, but you can see a change in the smoke trail, it’ll get a little wiggle," Alcocer said. "The first time we tried to push a rocket through the sound barrier, it disintegrated."

His latest rocket is a carbon fiber model, five [inches] in diameter and eight feet long, designed using a special program on his home PC.

Alcocer is a member of Tripoli, a national organization that certifies rocketeers as they move up the ladder of the size and power of rockets they can build. He is also president of the Association of Experimental Rocketry of the Pacific.

Copyright © 2008, The Press Democrat.