Ingraham's rocketry teams flying high, qualify for national competition

On the very last launch, on the very last possible day to qualify for the national student rocket championships, Team Bravo's string of bad luck finally broke.

The motor on the Ingraham High team's model rocket didn't stick on the launch pad, as it had earlier. The parachute didn't come out too early. Even better, it didn't fail to come out — which previously led to a lot of repair work.

Instead, everything went right. Team Bravo members, who'd kissed the egg inside beforehand for good luck, jumped up and down. They knew then that they'd likely qualify for the competition, along with Ingraham's other two teams.

On Thursday, all three teams — made up mostly of girls from the public school in North Seattle — will fly to Virginia to compete in the Team America Rocketry Challenge, billed as the world's largest model-rocket contest.

They are the only three teams from the Pacific Northwest to qualify this year, and they'll compete against 97 other teams from across the nation.

The challenge: Design and build a model rocket that flies exactly 750 feet into the air, has a total flight time of 45 seconds and lands gently enough so that an uncooked egg inside does not break. The team that comes the closest will win an all-expense-paid trip to the Paris Air Show as well as a $5,000 scholarship to be divided among team members.

The rocket club at Seattle's Ingraham High began three years ago, when science teacher Peter Schurke received a flier about the contest. He'd had fun building rockets when he was a kid, so he put an announcement in the school bulletin to see if any Ingraham students might be interested.

The first year, about a dozen students joined, and they dubbed their rocket The Baby because of the strong feelings they had for their creation. But The Baby's best flight came up just short, by about two-tenths of a point, of qualifying for nationals.

The second year, most of the same students returned and built a shorter rocket they called Little Sister. They qualified for nationals, but a computer glitch kept them from making it beyond the first round. Still, they placed 29th out of the 100 teams.

This school year 21 students joined Ingraham's rocket club and Schurke split them into three teams: Alpha, Bravo and Charlie.

Many team members had been just groupies, who tagged along to watch at launches. But it looked so cool they decided to join.

One was senior Kim Smith, now the club's chief designer. She plans to major in chemistry or chemical engineering at the University of Washington, and she dreams of working for NASA. Through the team, she says, "you realize it's a plausible thing that could happen."

Team members meet during lunch to work on their rockets, which are about 3 to 4 feet tall, and constructed with cardboard tubes, expanding foam (to protect the egg), plywood, Kevlar thread and plastic. They purchase the motors and altimeters, but sew their own parachutes out of ripstop nylon.

The students use computer programs to design and test the rockets. Then they perform real-life launches at Redmond's Sixty Acres Park, the closest place with enough open space.

One key to success is persistence, says Schurke. Each team has done at least 200 simulated flights and, with just days until nationals, they are still fine tuning.

One day last week several Ingraham Rocketry Team members stood in a stiff wind at Sixty Acres for a few more test flights to determine if they need a bigger parachute.

Freshman Kirsten Ma held the launch box, with Team Charlie's rocket — nicknamed the Great White Whale — on the launch pad.

She counted off: "Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero."

Nothing happened.

"If our batteries are drained, I'm going to be ticked," said Schurke.

But after several more tries, the engine shot up with a roar, and soon looked no bigger than a matchstick in the sky.

Senior Alex Kon, a member of Team Alpha, loves each and every rocket flight.

"It's just a phenomenal feeling that something we engineered and built from scratch ... launched into the air and took us to nationals," he said. "Every time it goes up, I get the same feeling."

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com