Rocketry Nationals Recap
Photos submitted by Nathan Tran and Patrick Wang.
The most slept-on, most underground, most niche club at Hamilton High School, returns to the spotlight in an epic, fire-filled and action-packed blaze. That’s right; Hamilton High School just had its first ever ARC Rocketry team make it to Nationals—the only team from all of Wisconsin to make it this year—carrying with them the great pride of the midwest cheese state.
The team of seven, named the Freaky Flyers, first had to build a rocket that qualified for Nationals, which achieved a near perfect score during qualification flights. After that, they had to build a different rocket as a backup. They had to meticulously engineer and tune both to achieve consistent, perfect flights. Their dreams almost got disastrously derailed when the black rocket catastrophically self-dismantled in a fiery ball of sadness and smoke. Fortunately, the team was able to get it put back together in time for Nationals.
Now, you may be wondering how the ARC competition works, so let us lay out the rules for you.
Rules and Scoring
To give a bit of background information, the American Rocketry Challenge (ARC) is a rocket flying competition. Teams must build a rocket, with certain size limitations, to fly to a specified altitude and stay in the air for 36 to 39 seconds. The altitudes that were randomly drawn were 730 and 725. For every foot off of the target altitude, your team gets 1 point. For every second outside the target time range, your team gets 4 points. Rocketry is like golf; you want the lowest score. Also, your rocket has to have an egg inside. If the egg breaks, you’re disqualified. That’s the most basic overview I can give. Pretty cool, right? Now, time to see how our heroes did.
Results
Image generated by Gemini, recreating the totally real and not satirical EF-5 tornado that caused the second flight to be sub-optimal.
The first Freaky Flight went off without a hitch, obtaining an almost perfect score of 9. This score put the team in a provisional 6th place out of the 100 teams at nationals, and allowed us to fly off in the second round. During the second round, a totally real and not fabricated EF-5 tornado smashed the flight, causing the rocket to fly off at a 45 degree angle and go super low. The time was also screwed as well. This caused the second flight to score a 96.84, dropping them to 37th place.
Besides the totally real and not fabricated EF-5 tornado, there were other possible factors that caused the most disastrous launch in all of Hamilton Rocketry history. Aarush Agnihotri, team lead, chalks it up to the rocket being misaligned on the launch rail, a 5ft metal structure that is supposed to ensure the rocket leaves the launch pad going straight up with sufficient speed. Other team members blame faulty motors and the rocket’s ballast melting and weighing the rocket down on one side. Some others blame it on the curses that Freaky Flyers and another team traded, causing the abysmal fall-off of both teams. Whatever the cause is, Freaky Flyers needs to find the issue that caused the rocket to veer back on course and not repeat it next year.
Freaks were not too happy about their second flight.
First place of the whole competition went to The Bishop’s School, diagonally sliding in from La Jolla, California, with a combined final score of 11. Second place went to Washington Youth Aerospace, with a final score of 12. Third place went to Hardin Valley Academy, with a score of 15.2. These guys won $20,000, $15,000, and $12,500 respectively.
Until next time!
Stay tuned as our Freaky heroes slide on the opps at nationals next year! If 1 egg wasn't complicated enough, the new rules dictate they must fly 2 eggs to a height of 800 feet. As the seniors, who brought many critical technical skills to the team, go to greener pastures, who can join Rocketry to carry the hopes and dreams of Hamilton High School to the national stage again?
