There were many great role models at the recently conducted 2010
Team America Rocketry Challenge... and many of them are NAR
members, mentoring the hundreds of kids that took part in TARC2010
-- NAR members like John Hochheimer. The National Association of
Rocketry is a nonprofit educational organization for consumers that
advances the hobby of sport rocketry through organized events,
local clubs, technical certification, research and development, and
government and corporate partnerships to ensure that rocketry
continues to be safe, educational, and fun.
NAR was founded in 1957, and is the oldest and largest sport
rocketry association in the world, with over 4500 members and 120
affiliated clubs across the U.S. The Team America Rocketry
Challenge (TARC) is an aerospace design and engineering event for
teams of US secondary school students (7th through 12th grades) run
by the NAR and the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA). Teams
can be sponsored by schools or by non-profit youth organizations
such as Scouts, 4-H, or Civil Air Patrol (but not the NAR or other
rocketry organizations). The goal of TARC is to motivate students
to pursue aerospace as an exciting career field, and it is
co-sponsored by the American Association of Physics Teachers, 4-H,
the Department of Defense, and NASA.
The event involves designing and building a model rocket (2.2
pounds or less, using NAR-certified model rocket motors totaling no
more than 80.0 Newton-seconds of total impulse) that carries a
payload of 1 Grade A Large egg for a flight duration of 40 - 45
seconds, and to an altitude of exactly 825 feet (measured by an
onboard altimeter), and that then returns the egg to earth
uncracked using only a streamer as a recovery device. Onboard
timers are allowed; radio-control and pyrotechnic charges are
not.
The first seven Team America Rocketry Challenges, held in 2003
through 2009, were the largest model rocket contests ever held.
Co-sponsored by the NAR and the Aerospace Industries Association
(AIA), the five events together attracted about 5,100 high-school
teams made up of a total of over 50,000 students from all 50
states.
These students had a serious interest in learning about
aerospace design and engineering through model rocketry. The top
100 teams each year came to a final fly-off competition in late May
near Washington, DC, to compete for $60,000 in prizes. These teams
were selected based on the scores reported from qualification
flights that they conducted locally throughout the US.