Genetic Rockets

Completely randomly generated rockets, consistingly only of a body and thrusters in a random direction, are launched in a physics simulation. Their goal is to get to outer space, but given their random nature they'll most likely fail.

After they all die, or 15 seconds have elapsed, they are all used to create a new generation of rockets using a genetic algorithm. The best rockets from the preceding generation are kept, a mutation of the top one is made, a completely new rocket is randomly created, and the rest of them are all using the previous generation as parents to create new designs. As this goes on across generations, a rocket that will ascend all the way into space should eventually appear.