Three years have elapsed since the call for a "Hacker Space Program" during the Chaos Communication Camp 2011. In this lecture we will review the basics of space flight, discuss common problems and pitfalls encountered by a practitioner on the way to orbit, and report on the state of our sounding rocket program.
We are the Forschungsgemeinschaft Alternative Raumfahrt e. V. (Research Community on Alternative Space Travel) or FAR for short, and have been working on feasible ways into space since our foundation in August 2003. After extensive experimentation with solid and hybrid propulsion systems on the ground, we developed the sounding rocket family "Arguna". Since 2005 four different versions have been designed, built, and flown with different payloads. After a short review of basic rocket science and an outline of common propulsion technologies, we will report on the results of performed flights and experiments, especially of our latest sounding rocket Arguna IV.