Rocket Competition

My son is on a team in the "Team America Rocketry Challenge" which has its final competition today (weather permitting). Here's a link to the official website. Some 900 teams from around the country participated. The challenge is to get a rocket to fly to exactly 750 feet and come back down to earth in 48-50 seconds with an unbroken raw egg. If the egg breaks it's an automatic disqualification. Any variance outside the exact altitude and time earns you points and so like golf, the lowest score wins.

The top 100 teams from around the country are gathering here for the finals today. One shot for all the marbles. The cut off score to make the top 100 was 16.21 - my son's team scored a 15. So they don't expect to win, but who knows? Maybe everything will go right for them. They had a lot of fun figuring everything out over the year. I'll post an update tomorrow to let you know what happened.

UPDATE: My son's team finished 10th at the national competition! And the great news is that the top 10 all get an invitation to the next step up rocket competition next year sponsored by NASA and taking place in Huntsville, Alabama. Very cool. More information and results on the web site linked to above.