[ExI] American Rocketry Challenge sees Portland school take 2021 championship

[John Grigg]

"A Portland-area high school came out on top in a new "distributed" version
of this year's American Rocketry Challenge that was optimized for pandemic
safety.

Oregon Episcopal School received $20,000
<https://rocketcontest.org/result/2021/> for coming within one foot and 6.7
feet (2 meters) of a specified altitude in two flights, putting it best
among 100 national finalists. As a first-time finalist, the school also
received $2,500 for posting the best results among the rookies, and an
additional $1,000 given to each finalist participant for placing best in
their distributed launch site — bringing the total haul close to $25,000.

To qualify for the winner's circle, participating finalist teams had to get
as close as they could to 775 feet (236 m) within 39 to 42 seconds on their
first flight, and 825 feet (nearly 252 m) within 41 to 44 seconds on their
second flight, according to competition rules
<https://rocketcontest.org/faq/>. (The rocket also had minimum weight,
length and motor qualifications, among other things.)"

"Weinstein — who also will graduate in 2022 — said the 10 team students had
a range of skills, but most of all OES was working to recruit people who
were willing to learn the various competencies today's rocket engineer
requires, including fuels, materials, computer-assisted design and computer
programming.

The challenge, he added, takes the theoretical work of physics studied in
the classroom "into something that you're actually designing, and may or
may not work. I think that's really cool for people to see the skills that
they've been learning applied to a real-world problem, and that gets them
excited about learning more."
https://www.space.com/american-rocketry-challenge-2021-championship
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