Budding rocket scientists aim for the moon
The mission: Fly a rocket for as long as possible.
The prize: A limousine ride and dinner with former astronaut Chris Hadfield.
The contestants: 44 Grade 6 students from public and Catholic schools across Regina.
And so it was that the walls of the University of Regina’s Centre for Kinesiology, Health and Sport were lined with homemade contraptions on Wednesday morning, all with the purpose of firing a rocket.
The rockets were anything from paper airplanes to empty pop bottles, paper coffee cups and lengths of plastic piping; their launch pads took the form of wooden or plastic frames and elastic bands.
Some students decorated their projects with coloured tape, paint or glitter; one rocket was even filled with multi-coloured confetti.
Take McNeil student Breanna Holt’s creation.
The inspiration for Holt’s launcher came from a potato gun her dad made in the summer, then she covered the entire structure with bright pink and patterned tape.
“My dad always says that if you’re doing something, you should give it 110 per cent,” she explained.
“I just like thinking outside the box.”
That approach got her to the competition final.
One of the first students to let off a rocket was John Lang, from St. Dominic — but unfortunately it didn’t go as well as it had during testing.
“I definitely thought I could do better, but my technique was a bit off,” he said afterwards.
Was the Hadfield prize a driver for his project?
“Oh yeah, because at first it was just for fun, but once we had the chance to meet Chris Hadfield, I tried as hard as I could,” Lang said.
St. Francis student Matthew Gordon had similar thoughts.
“If I won, I would be ecstatic, because he’s a famous Canadian astronaut,” he said.
After each student fired their contraption, the top five scorers in each school division — those whose rockets stayed in the air for the longest — entered the final round.
The tension mounted as each finalist let their rocket off three times; their scores would be averaged to find the winners.
Some rockets couldn’t take it, bands snapping and things falling apart for some of the finalists; others had their most impressive flights yet, one gliding over the air duct at the top of the gymnasium before lazily floating down the other side.
The winners (Maguire Coffey, Zach Wingert, Andrew Sobchyshyn and Alexa Fauchon) will sit at Hadfield’s table and hear him speak at the Canadian Humanitarian banquet in Regina on Mar. 28.
That felt “pretty good” to Wingert, who admitted he wasn’t sure he would even make the final.
“There were some pretty good (rockets) out there — it was pretty tight competition,” he said.