For a second year in a row, Northwest R-1 School District students will compete in the national American Rocketry Challenge and hope to improve upon last year’s showing.
Woodridge science teacher Thomas Laybourn said two teams of students will compete in the event, set for Saturday, May 14, in The Plains, Va., which is about 30 minutes from Washington, D.C.
“We will be meeting up there with the top 100 teams in the nation competing for who is the grand champion of rocketry for the United States, and the winning team goes to England to compete for the International (award),” he said. “So keep your fingers crossed.”
Laybourn said the team he sponsors is made up of both high schoolers and middle schoolers, while Woodridge Middle teacher Severin Krautmann’s team just has students from that school.
Each team will compete with a rocket designed and built completely by the students, Laybourn said.
“These kids are going to be astronauts. They’re going to be engineers and generals,” he said.
Laybourn said all the students must have a C- or above in every class to go to the competition.
For this year’s event, each team will get two launches, and each rocket must carry two chicken eggs up to 835 feet in the air then land without breaking the eggs, all within 40 to 44 seconds.
“They have to be regular raw chicken eggs,” he said. “Eggs have to lie inside the rocket horizontally.”
Also, the rocket must weigh less than 650 grams, Laybourn said.
“It’s pretty inspiring, because these are teenagers – middle schoolers and high schoolers,” he said.
Last year, Northwest sent one team to the national competition, which was held in Dayton, Ohio, and both of the team’s launches were disqualified. On one of the launches a rocket separated, and the other launch had a parachute failure which caused the egg inside to break, according to the district’s website.
Laybourn said it is a big deal to get to nationals.
“I’m just happy I get a chance to be part of it,” he said. “Watching them grow, mature, get better and better is beautiful.”
Laybourn said the team did qualify to attend nationals in 2020, but the event was canceled that year due to the pandemic.
For this year, the teams’ qualification launches were held on Krautmann’s Farm near Hillsboro. Laybourn’s team qualifying launch was March 27, and Krautmann’s team launch was April 3.
Freshman Erin Anderson, 15, of House Springs said this is her second year on the rocket team.
“I’ve learned how to calculate thrust. We’ve learned how to construct model rockets and the different stages they go through whenever they launch,” she said.
Anderson said during the team’s launches, each member of the team has a specific task.
“I’m in charge of making sure that we do our checklist, go through our checklist, make sure we have everything that we need to launch and then I write down the data,” she said.
Anderson said she is excited to attend this year’s national competition.
“I think it’s the coolest thing that we can do,” she said.
Laybourn’s team includes Anderson, sixth-graders Carley Bunjak, Isabella Sundell and Lucas Workes; seventh-graders Morgan Bowen, Lucas Sanders, Morgan Sheetz and Gavin Martens; and eighth-graders Clare Slama and Ryan Milligan.
Krautmann’s team includes sixth-graders Kaden Heap, Tyrus Spence and William Smithee; seventh-graders Emillio Sandival, Troy Honzell and RJ Gahn; and eighth-graders Morgan Trankler, Jason Bakula, Lea Lepp and Hayden Ford.