On April 25, Steve Eves of Ohio launched the largest model rocket in history: a 1,700-pound, 36-foot-high replica of the legendary Saturn V booster that took the first astronauts to the Moon. It rose to about 4,400 feet, deployed chutes, and settled to the ground — upright.
Check out this YouTube video. Listen to that thing roar!
Model rocketeer and Fresno, California, lawyer Mark Canepa provided the photos. 
Check out his
outstanding pre-launch profile of the project in Rockets magazine, “One man's quest to honor America's Saturn V rocket.”
Here’s Canepa’s take on the amazingness of Steve Eves’ successful launch in a Maryland farm field:
“Steve Eves not only built the world's largest flying model rocket, but he also allowed thousands of people to share in the recreation of one of the greatest events in history, the launch of Apollo 11. To see his rocket lit up by floodlights on the pad, the night before the launch, was incredible. All morning on Saturday, people of all ages walked a quarter of a mile from the parking and spectator area just to see the rocket up close, and to touch this replica of the Saturn V. For a moment, you felt like a child again, that this was Cape Kennedy in 1969, and anything was possible.”
Writing about this event has brought back some memories for me, too. I was born in 1963, when the Saturn V hadn’t left the pad yet. I’d love to tell you John F. Kennedy’s stirring speeches sent me on some inevitable path leading to my desk at
Astronomy magazine. But I never heard the speeches — I wasn’t born yet — and I have no specific memory of seeing astronauts cavorting on the lunar surface.
In truth, it was Estes — not Apollo — that fired my boyhood imagination. Estes made model rocket kits, a product for which I had an insatiable hunger. Just flipping through the catalog was a thrill.
Other aerospace initiatives followed into my teenage years. One was building a glider with a 4-foot wingspan using individually fabricated teardrop-shaped spars covered with doped wing paper. After its last and longest flight, my stepfather accidentally ran it over with his Ford Econoline van. Oh, the humanity!
All photos courtesy Mark Canepa