Black Rock Desert, Nevada, is the location of Burning Man. It is also the location of a lot of other strange things. That includes the Balls High Power Experimental Rocket Launch.

The experimental rockets at Balls fly high enough to require an FAA waiver. A lot higher. At least the ones that don't explode right in front of your eyes. Many of the rockets are built by teams with serious engineering skills (some of the guys have day jobs at Boing and NASA), serious explosives certifications, and, in some cases, serious funding. If I had hundreds of millions of dollars from a tech IPO. I'd probably spend a lot of the money on tech projects too (I include fast cars in this category.)

Balls is not a public event. I guess primarely because it's quite dangerous. I have been going to Balls as part of Jeff Jacobs SORAC team for three years in a row now as photographer. The photos this year were taken with pretty serious camera equipment: a Canon EOS 1Ds, 24-70mm 2.8L, 70-200mm 2.8L, 300mm 2.8L, and a lot of other very expensive things. During the sand storms the gear got hammered by so much fine grain dust that I was seriously concerned about the health of the set-up. As far as I could tell, my rental gear worked perfectly fine when I returned it 3 days later though. Here are some photos from Balls 2004 and 2002.