West Morgan Middle rocketry program blasts off to national competition
May 6—The middle school rocketry team members at West Morgan are preparing for liftoff once again, and they're also trying to ensure their craft makes a soft landing that doesn't crack raw eggs.
West Morgan Middle will compete this month in the American Rocketry Challenge National Finals in the Washington, D.C., area against schools from all over the country.
To qualify for the American Rocketry Challenge National Finals, teams have to design, build, and launch their own model rocket.
"Your rocket has to be at least 650 millimeters long and under 650 grams fully loaded," said coach Alexander Toll, a sixth grade science and social studies teacher at West Morgan. "It has to carry two raw eggs perpendicular to the body tube, launch to an altitude of 835 feet and stay in the air between 41 and 44 seconds."
The eggs are the rocket's "astronauts," located within the rocket toward the tip and base. The rocket must land with both eggs in one piece and if one or both eggs are damaged, the team will be disqualified from the competition.
The 20-year-old competition will involve 101 teams from 27 states, with six of those teams coming from Alabama. There were over 730 teams featuring 4,000 students in 41 states that participated in qualifying.
The teams will be competing for $100,000 in prizes.
The West Morgan Middle program is comprised of two different teams: the seventh grade team and the sixth and eighth grade team. Each team has 10 players.
The program qualified for the national launch with the sixth and eighth grade group's rocket, known as The Bumblebee, but seventh graders will also travel with them to the national competition.
Toll said teams are allowed three qualifying launches, but their top two are recorded. He said the West Morgan students' first launch was a disqualification because of the parachute malfunctioning, which resulted in their eggs cracking from the hard landing.
In their second launch, the rocket sailed to 823 feet in 35.34 seconds and the last flight went to 842 feet in 41.48 seconds. Toll said to qualify, the rocket must reach at least 835 feet in between 41 and 44 seconds.
The sixth and eighth grade students built their yellow rocket out of cardboard and it contains an altimeter, which measures and records the rocket's altitude, and a small parachute. It runs on a single-use 24-millimeter Aerotech motor, a pre-assembled motor that is used only once and discarded.
"I spray-painted the rocket and glued the motor holder on," said sixth grade student Jackson Poole.
The students said perfecting the rocket's landing proved to be challenging, requiring adjustments to be made to the parachute.
"We ended up having to extend the length of the shock cord on the parachute and tie knots into it to allow it to fully pull out of the body tube," said sixth grader Hudson Cole. "With our other rocket, the second time we launched it, the rope connecting it to the parachute broke in half."
Poole said both the deployment and landing phase of the launch are equally important, but landing was the most difficult procedure.
"If the rocket is going down too fast, the eggs are going to probably crack and you'll be disqualified," Poole said. "If it's going too slow, you'll be disqualified as well."
The competition will be held May 14 in The Plains, Virginia, and teams who place in the top 50 will compete at the international competition in London. Teams that place in the top 25 will earn spots in the NASA Student Launch workshop.
— wesley.tomlinson@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2438.
