CONTEST EMAIL ARCHIVES

Date: 06/04/2007

Subject: TARC Wrap Up and 08

Final Results. The final official results from TARC 2007 are listed on www.rocketcontest.org, including both the official places in the competition event and the special "partner" awards. The top 10 winning teams split cash prizes totalling $50,000, and $1000 went to each of their sponsoring schools. The top 25 teams will be invited to participate in the NASA Student Launch Initiative program for the next academic year. Congratulations to the winning team, from Newark Memorial High School of Newark, CA (flying in their 4th TARC Finals), who won not only $10,500 cash for the student team members, but also a trip for the whole team to attend the June Paris Air Show as VIP guests of the Raytheon Corporation.

We were privileged to have the Secretary of Defense, the Honorable Robert Gates, as the principal speaker and presenter of awards at the final ceremony. We were also honored by the presence of the Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne (who sent an F-117 stealth fighter overhead for the opening ceremony), and Undersecretary of the Air Force Ron Sega; the Director of Defense Research and Engineering John Young, 5 veteran astronauts including Buzz Aldrin, and innumerable senior officials of NASA, the Department of Defense, and the member aerospace companies of AIA. All of the distinguished guests were there to show their support for the mission of TARC, which is to encourage the brightest young people of the United States to consider aerospace and engineering as a career field in order to maintain America's global leadership in aerospace. This mission is spreading; we had the winning team from UKAYROC, the exact same event flown this year in England for the first time, present at TARC as guests and guest-fliers.

TARC Finals Magazine Article Coverage. Each year the National Association of Rocketry (NAR) does a complete coverage article on the TARC Finals in the rocketry hobby's premier magazine, Sport Rocketry. This magazine is sent only to NAR members; you can get it by joining the NAR online at www.nar.org or using the attached membership application. This year the NAR would like to include in this article 3 to 5 short (but non-fiction!) stories from individual teams that made the Finals, describing how they did it. This could include a description of unusual challenges or of achievements of which the team is particularly proud in such areas as getting organized, raising funds, doing the rocket design, test-flying, or even their experiences at the Finals. These should be limited to highlights and be no more than 300 or so words, so several of them can be fit into the article. One or two accompanying high-resolution digital photos (with captions), particularly of team activities before the Finals, are also welcome. Teams that are interested in doing this, please submit your articles/photos by June 5 to TARC headquarters, rocketcontest@aia-aerospace.org. Please identify a point of contact with the article, so any edits made to it before publication can be checked with the author.

TARC Finals Video Coverage. A commercial rocket-video production company, VooDoo Digital, covered the TARC 2007 Finals and will be making a 90-minute DVD of the event, which is available for advance order and will be shipped in July. The price is $19.95 plus $2 shipping, and you can find the order form here: http://www.aia-aerospace.org/pdf/TARC%202007%20Video%20Order%20Form.pdf

TARC 2008. We will be announcing the details of TARC 2008 by mid-June. Similarly to this year, registration will open in early September 2007, the Finals will be in mid-May 2008 at Great Meadow, and the performance goal will be a combination of altitude and duration for single-stage egg-carrying rockets. Sign up now at the www.rocketcontest.org website to be sent information on the event as soon as it is announced.

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