CV’s Rocket Men Ready for National Challenge
On a cold February morning outside of Fresno, six students from Castro Valley High School launched their model rockets as a runup to a qualifying event in April and the national competition in Washington DC in May.
The CVHS Rocketry Club, which is participating in this year's TARC (The American Rocketry Challenge), started a chapter at the high school last year during virtual distance learning. The club meets at lunchtime typically in the engineering workshop to collaborate, laser cut, 3D print, design, and build their rocket models.
The club includes Aidan Rickert, Karl Haidinyak, Sam Garcia, Rassa Wood, Peter Shlychkov, and club president Anton Pimentel. The students are currently doing test flights in preparation for certification flights which involves having a couple of advisors witness and evaluate their launches. They essentially need to design a rocket that can reach a certain height and then land in a state where it can be launched again.
“We are designing and will build a mid-power rocket with an F Motor for the competition,” said Pimentel. “The rocket has to fly 835 feet and land in a condition that would allow it to fly over and over again. The entire flight has to last 41-43 seconds.”
During the competition, the team also needs to put two eggs that must be unbroken when the rocket lands.
Some of the test flights have actually failed—either the egg broke, or parts of the rocket were damaged. But that's how the team says it gets the data it needs and the lessons for improving the rocket's design.
The adult advisors say it has really been wonderful to watch the students work together as a team, learning from their mistakes, talking about possible solutions, and celebrating when a test is successful.
“I had Anton in my Principles of Engineering class last year and even though they were working in a virtual space, Anton really wanted to start a rocketry club,” said CVHS teacher and club advisor Jessica Porter. “They started designing and discussing the ins and outs of a rocket virtually over Zoom meetings and as soon as they could make the club more official this school year. They’ve also partnered a lot with some of our FIRST Robotics kids and Aidan even joined the FIRST team for robotics as well.”
Anton said he got started with rocketry in 2019 and got his Junior High Power Rocketry Level 1 certification last June which meant he would be allowed to work with high-powered motors. He and Aidan say they teamed up early last year and subsequently invited others to form the club. They had planned to join the national rocketry challenge last year, but the pandemic derailed them. Anton says he is not sure, but he believes this is the first-ever CVHS Rocketry Club and the first team from Castro Valley to participate in The American Rocketry Challenge.
“It is so great to see kids in high school really find their passion in different fields of engineering and dive into it fully to immerse themselves in so many cool opportunities,” Porter said. “When I was in high school, my high school didn’t have an engineering pathway or any of this so to be able to teach it now in high school and give kids so many opportunities like rocketry club is definitely an amazing blessing and to see them shoot for the stars (no pun intended).”