CONTEST EMAIL ARCHIVES

Date: 05/02/2006

Subject: Rhinelander team in national rocket showdown

Rhinelander team in national rocket showdown
The Rhinelander Daily News
May 1, 2006
By Dean S. Acheson - Daily News

A Rhinelander High School team will package everything they know about mathematics, science, physics - and even a dash of engineering - into a model rocket to shoot aloft for a possible share of the $60,000 of prize money offered in the national finals of the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC).

The second annual national competition takes place May 19-20 at Great Meadow in The Plains, Va. It's billed as the largest model rocket contest in the world. The event is sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA).

AIA President and CEO John W. Douglass said there is momentum gathering in TARC, helping the core mission of attracting young people to aerospace careers.

This is the first year of competition for the Rhinelander Science Club. Team members are David Cook, Beth Dobbins, Katy Dobbins, Ben Nebgen and Mike Zahn. Their advisor is Cheryl Esslinger and the parent support chaperone is Mark Nebgen, Ben's father.

Today's rocketry is not your father's rocketry.

"The thing that amazes me is how the kids in the club react," said Mark Nebgen, a science instructor at Nicolet College. "I would be happy just launching things in the air - they are using all the technology that they have." That technology includes computers and graphing calculators to compute trajectory and to eliminate drag.

The objective is not the stratosphere. Each rocket carries an altimeter that charts the height reached. The contest requires that students design, build and test a model rocket that can fly for as close to 45 seconds total flight duration and 800 feet maximum flight altitude as possible with a payload of one raw egg. They must successfully parachute the egg back to the ground unbroken.

If the egg is broken or cracked, the team is disqualified. "It makes it more complicated," Mark Nebgen said. "They can't have rough launches, separations (of stages) or landings."

The impetus for the local competition came from the older Nebgen, who saw an ad in Science Magazine about the competition.

He passed it on to his son who took it to his science teacher, Cheryl Esslinger, the club's advisor.

A total of 687 teams from 47 states and the District of Columbia took part in qualifying 7,000 middle and high school teams, said Esslinger. One hundred teams, including four from Wisconsin, were invited to compete at Virginia.

A member of the National Association of Rocketry had to officially time the local competition. But the nearest member was in Green Bay. Marty Neis, a retired physics instructor at Nicolet College, came to their rescue. She became a member of the organization and verified the local qualification.

The team will take its original design to nationals, Mark Nebgen said. "They put hours and hours into this (competition)," he said. Many weeks they spent two and three evenings a week launching rockets and analyzing the results. "They used the computer to come up with the design. It was a decent design, so they have not had to make major changes to that," he said.

He and his son have launched well over a hundred rockets just by themselves. "We have been involved in rocketry since he was a young kid," Nebgen said.

The Rhinelander team repainted Penguin - the name they gave their qualifying rocket - with fluorescent orange, as the original black color made it difficult to find once it returned to earth.

Mark Nebgen said the national competition will be spectacular with 10 rockets an hour launched. "There'll be a lot of smoke in the sky." Each team will have a one-hour "launch window" in which to set their rocket aloft. Only student members of the team are allowed on the flying field.

In addition to cash and Savings Bonds for the top 10, Raytheon will sweeten the pot with a trip for members of the winning team to the Farnborough International Airshow near London in July.

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