Tomorrow's Future Rocket Scientists Are Flying Model Rockets NOW

Meet three uncommon young men... these guys, who could otherwise be out in the world creating the kind of havoc most teens are known for, ventured to the wilds of Virginia several months ago to show that they had the right stuff... along with hundreds of their equally rocket-oriented peers. These three fellows, all hailing from the Northside College Prep High School of Chicago, IL, competed in the 2010 Team America Rocketry Challenge and plainly had a ball.

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 come 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.

FMI: www.rocketcontest.org, www.aia-aerospace.org, www.nar.org/TAchallenge.html, www.aero-tv.net, www.youtube.com/aerotvnetwork, http://twitter.com/AeroNews