What is the boogeyman -- gees or velocity?

By "boogeyman" I think you're referring to "what will destroy my rocket" then the answer is about the same. As you know F=ma so the force acting on a rocket is directly proportional the the acceleration. So a rocket that weighs 1 pound subjected to 50 G's has forces acting on it (due to the acceleration alone) of 50 pounds.

The force acting on a rocket due to the velocity is the drag and it actually proportional to the velocity squared. So it is tempting to say that it would have a much higher affect but there are other terms (I won't go into here) that make it substantially smaller. For example I need to calculate when the boosters on my Freeze Frame rocket are need to come off so I recently just did these calculations. At about 650 mph (when they deployed) the drag force on the boosters was about 9 pounds. If you double the speed to 1300 mph or nearly Mach 2 the force goes up by a factor of four or 36 pounds of force due to the drag. Triple it to 1950 mph about your are talking about nine times the force or 81 pounds of drag.

Of course this is very simplistic but at the speeds and accelerations you're talking about the drag force can exceed the force due to acceleration. Your mileage may vary...

Doug

Intriguing... I got to playing with some sims on really, really light rockets using the M1315 and I'm pretty sure I'm not capable of building something that would be quite light AND survive. It would be an energetic shred, though 😯