Strong showing for Ingraham High in rocketry contest

Take a raw egg. Blast it skyward in a rocket to a height of precisely 825 feet. Return the egg to earth unbroken and make sure the total time in the air is between 40 and 45 seconds.

Points lost for every foot away from that height target. Points lost for every second the egg is in the air outside that time window.

That's the annual Team America Rocketry Challenge, a competition designed to fire up schoolkids about aerospace and engineering.

On Saturday, 100 teams out of 669 entrants from all over the U.S. competed in the national finals in Washington, D.C., including four teams from Ingraham High School in Seattle and one from Kentwood High School in Covington.

In April, Ingraham rocket-club students had traveled as part of a NASA program to Huntsville, Ala., where they launched a 10-foot long, high-powered rocket a mile into the air.

In Saturday's competition with smaller rockets, two of the Ingraham teams finished fourth and 10th, the school's best result in four years of competition. The kids in each of those top 10 teams split a $3,000 scholarship prize for getting the engineering right.

Patrick Ma, an 18-year-old Ingraham senior, said his team's first flight in the morning qualified them for the flyoff in the afternoon.

"Our first flight went exactly as we'd simulated it," said Ma. "The second flight, we changed a couple of things to account for the weather."

The wind had died since the morning flight, so they knew the rocket would fly straighter on the second attempt. To hit their height target precisely, they tweaked the weight, adding 10 grams of ballast.

The payload section, carrying the egg protected by a mold of insulating foam, separated from the booster rocket and floated to the ground slowed by a 10-inch streamer flapping behind.

Ma's team finished fourth. "It turned out well," Ma said. "Everybody had a lot of fun."

The team that placed 10th lost the booster stage of their rocket on the first run but qualified for the flyoff by delivering their egg safely. They borrowed another Ingraham team's rocket for the second flight.

Liza Minkina on that team said that before joining the rocket club at Ingraham she'd had little interest in math or science. The rocket competition and the trip to Huntsville have turned that around.

"I've had an amazing experience," said Minkina, 18, who, like Ma, is headed next year to the University of Washington.

Ingraham team coach, science teacher Peter Schurke, said his students began designing the rockets last fall and did practice and qualifying flights at Sixty Acres park in Redmond, the only big open space in the area where they don't need permits — though they do have to make way for soccer games.

Though federal budget cuts have put the future direction of NASA in doubt, Schurke said his kids are geared toward engineering and science careers.

"We really do push the idea of science, technology, engineering and mathematics," said Schurke. "It helps that we have rockets to get their attention."

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com