College kids build low-cost rocket.
Geeze, I think the most sophisticated thing I ever made when I was in college was an emergency bong.
Those crazy whippersnappers! Back in my day, we had to push the rockets into space by hand! In the snow! Uphill, both ways!
Centuri! 
Before Homeland Insecurity I built and flew lots of big rockets, with the right cert you could build a rocket capable of of reaching 15,000 feet with “off the shelf” parts pretty easily. Getting into orbit requires a lot more work! I think my best was 1,800 with a 1/2 pound payload, but that was limited because of the recovery area size. I could have gone to 6,000 with that rocket on a bigger field but the walk to recover the thing would have been about a 5 mile round trip (worst case). So I guess what I’m saying is that there are people that do what they did several times a year. Ain’t no big thing.
There is a big difference between 3,000 feet with a 1/2-pound payload and 3,000 feet with a 22-pound payload. Isn’t there? The article doesn’t specify which payload they used, but they’re also using an aerospike engine and liquid fuel – don’t most hobbyists stick to solids even up into the 10,000-foot class? They’re not breaking any new ground yet, but they’re testing new tech at the hobbyist/semi-pro level. Very cool.
From the looks of the video, it really doesn’t look like that it went very high. Any payload dropped off there will just fall with the rocket, yes?
Since the rockets are not for space flight they mus be for something else. Now MIT will attack CalTech for developing WMDs.
What, no-one had the balls to make a “Testes” joke?
It was in the Mojave desert. It probably had “ACME” written on the side and the idea was to strap it to the back of a coyote on rollerskates.