ANN was blown away by what we saw and learned at the 2010 Team
America Rocketry Challenge... all around were GREAT kids...
assisted by GREAT adults employed in seeking GREAT goals... and
collectively having a ball. What was wrong with that? NOTHING...
absolutely nothing.
And one of the reasons for the many successes we saw that day
was the leadership so generously provided by industry power players
who were willing to give of themselves so that they could have a
hand in shaping the next generation of Rocketeers. One such power
player was the head of Textron, himself, Scott Donnelly. Scott C.
Donnelly is president and chief executive officer of Textron Inc.
Donnelly oversees Textron's business units as well as the
corporation's Information Technology, Six Sigma, Engineering and
Global Sourcing functions.
Donnelly joined Textron in July 2008 as executive vice president
and chief operating officer and was promoted to president and chief
operating officer in January 2009. He became CEO in December 2009.
Donnelly was previously president and CEO for General Electric (GE)
Aviation, the world's leading producer of large and small jet
engines for commercial and military aircraft and a major provider
of flight management, actuation and power management systems. Prior
to that, he served as senior vice president and director of GE
Global Research, the world's largest and most diversified
industrial research organization. He also serves as chairman for
the Aerospace Industries Association.
The Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) is an aerospace
design and engineering event for teams of US secondary school
students (7th through 12th grades) run by the NAR and the Aerospace
Industries Association (AIA). Teams can be sponsored by schools or
by non-profit youth organizations such as Scouts, 4-H, or Civil Air
Patrol (but not the NAR or other rocketry organizations). The goal
of TARC is to motivate students to pursue aerospace as an exciting
career field, and it is co-sponsored by the American Association of
Physics Teachers, 4-H, the Department of Defense, and NASA.
The event involves designing and building a model rocket (2.2
pounds or less, using NAR-certified model rocket motors totaling no
more than 80.0 Newton-seconds of total impulse) that carries a
payload of 1 Grade A Large egg for a flight duration of 40 - 45
seconds, and to an altitude of exactly 825 feet (measured by an
onboard altimeter), and that then returns the egg to earth
uncracked using only a streamer as a recovery device. Onboard
timers are allowed; radio-control and pyrotechnic charges are
not.
The first seven Team America Rocketry Challenges, held in 2003
through 2009, were the largest model rocket contests ever held.
Co-sponsored by the NAR and the Aerospace Industries Association
(AIA), the five events together attracted about 5,100 high-school
teams made up of a total of over 50,000 students from all 50
states.
These students had a serious interest in learning about
aerospace design and engineering through model rocketry. The top
100 teams each year came to a final fly-off competition in late May
near Washington, DC, to compete for $60,000 in prizes. These teams
were selected based on the scores reported from qualification
flights that they conducted locally throughout the US.
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