Members of the Cloudbusters, Durango School District 9-R’s rocket club, were disappointed to learn Friday they did not qualify for a national competition, but it didn’t dampen their enthusiasm for rockets.
They submitted final scores Monday to Team America Rocketry Challenge after almost six months of building and testing rocket designs.
Win or lose, they looked back on a year of learning, teamwork and fun – and say they will do it all again next year.
“I think this is long-term, I’m loving this,” said Elsie Cady, 14, who flew rockets for the first time this year. “I don’t think I could just say goodbye. I am always so happy when I wake up and realize today is rocket club.”
The 14-member group is managed by Scot Davis, community education coordinator for Durango Fire Protection District, who has built rockets since he got his first kit when he was in the fifth grade in 1975. He held three rocket workshops last year, one at the Powerhouse Science Center and a couple through the DFPD. The club grew from that, mostly with students who participated in the workshops and friends they brought in.
The club received an $1,800 grant from Bank of Colorado, which paid for about two-thirds of the expenses, and parents chipped in the rest.
Davis started the club in part because his daughter, Sage, 13, loves rockets as much as he does.
“I’ve been launching rockets with my dad since I was 2-ish,” she said. “But altering rockets was a new concept.”
It has been both a science education and an education in teamwork, the students said, talking about thrust, Newtons and resistance.
“Being such a big group, we learned so much so fast,” Elsie said. “We fight like brothers and sisters, and the consistency of the friendship is not only good for us, it’s good for the team.”
And people should stop using rocket science as a measurement of difficulty, 14-year-old Grady James said.
“You hear rocket science and think how complicated it must be,” he said. “But I never thought how somewhat simple they are.”
That is, until you look at rockets built to launch satellites, he said. The students went on a field trip to the United Launch Alliance in Centennial with Team America Rocketry Challenge teams from across Colorado. The alliance, a Lockheed/Boeing collaboration, builds and launches two workhorses, the Delta and Atlas rockets, Davis said.
“They use miles and miles of wire for their electrical systems,” Grady said. “I couldn’t believe it’s not color-coded.”
Davis was most impressed that the president of the alliance spoke with the students.
“He gave them a pitch, ‘We need you to come work with us,’” Davis said. “Sometimes, I think there’s no way they’ll get jobs in the industry, but a lot of rocket engineers who went to work in the 1960s, 1970s, are retiring now, and a lot of engineers in the 1990s and 2000s didn’t go into the field.”
The club began meeting in September, mostly in Davis’ home workshop.
“Our meetings are always three, sometimes four, hours, with a few breaks for play,” he said. “The kids really bought into it.”
The students spent three months working with an online design program, test-building virtual rockets, before they got hands-on experience. Since then, they have built numerous rockets, some as a group, some as teams, some as individuals.
“If something goes wrong, it can all be gone,” Elsie said. “It can be heartbreaking, like the time our rocket nose-dived.”
Grady agreed.
“We had two rockets that failed drastically,” he said. “It’s hard to watch, you’re shouting, ‘Come on parachute, come on parachute.’”
The Cloudbusters made its final test flights Monday for submission to the rocketry challenge, which splits $100,000 in scholarship money among the top 10 teams. Last year, more than 700 teams entered, with the top 100 going to Washington, D.C., for the finals.
For the 2016 challenge, the competitors had to construct rockets that will carry two eggs 850 feet in the air and return them to the ground in 42 to 46 seconds without breaking. The rockets cannot weigh more than 650 grams, must be longer than 25.4 inches and the list of materials is prescribed as well.
The 2016 competition will not be the end of the Cloudbusters, Davis said.
“They have the skills to be building 60- to 70-pound rockets, and I’m eagerly working on setting up a year-round program,” he said. “We just need a little seed money and a facility, and we already have great momentum.”
Pun intended.
abutler@durangoherald.com
