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Rocket Club Launching Rockets on the Bonneville Salt Flats |
 Drake Kirkham who is the quality leader at Cirris loves rockets. He has gradually moved up from the small rockets that most of us have often seen to some really giant rockets with over 1000 lbs of thrust. This photo captures the scale of some of the rockets that his rocket launching club are now into. He tells me that they often welcome fellow enthusist from all over the world who want to fly their rockets here. The FAA has given the club a waiver for this particular area so they are allowed to launch rockets that can reach a max altitude of 25,000 ft. (Did you ever image that the Bonneville Salt Flats were used for something besides land speed records?) For more information on the rocket club visit, Utah Rocket Club The Bonneville Salt Flats is one of the most unique natural features in Utah. Stretching over 30,000 acres, the Bonneville Salt Flats is a fragile resource administered by the Bureau of Land Management. It is located along I-80 near the Utah-Nevada border. Wendover is the closest city. This unique area is named in honor of Captain B.L.E. Bonneville, whose expeditions in the 1830's proved the area was part of an ancient basin. During the last Ice Age, about 15,000 years ago, Lake Bonneville was the size of Lake Michigan. It covered one-third of present day Utah and parts of neighboring states. You can see traces of the shorelines, representing different levels of the receding lake, etched into the mountains surrounding the salt flats.
The Bonneville Salt Flats and the Great Salt Lake are remnants of ancient Lake Bonneville. Wind and water combine to create the flat surface of salt. Each winter, a shallow layer of standing water floods the surface of the salt flats. During spring and summer, the water slowly evaporates while winds smooth the surface into a vast, nearly perfect flat plain.
The salt surface contains potassium, magnesium lithium and sodium chloride (common table salt).
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