Rocket Team Thank You Letter
June 8, 2018
From: Sebastian Petreus, CTE Teacher, David Douglas High School
DDEF,
With the help of our community, district, high school, and The David Douglas Educational Foundation, our rocket team had the opportunity, through the student’s hard work, to compete on the national stage in the Team America Rocketry Competition.
Every year parameters of the competition change. This year students were asked to launch two eggs to the height of 800 feet. Then the eggs were required to land, along with the rocket, within 42 to 44 seconds. Any deviation from the above requirements increased the team’s point total. For this competition the team with the lowest amount of points is the winner, with a perfect score of zero. Out of all of the teams in the United States, with students’ hard work, we got a score that allowed us to compete against the top 100 teams in the US in Washington DC.
Without the help of donors such as The David Douglas Educational Foundation we wouldn’t have been able to cover the costs for our team to compete and represent our community. The David Douglas Educational Foundation greatly helped us get around DC and to our official launch. Our donors showed us that they really do care about our kids and showed our kids that the community is rooting for them to succeed.
Unfortunately, during our first launch, we were disqualified from the competition. Our rocket had a major failure at 800 feet, where our eggs were ejected from the rocket and fell to the ground separate from the main rocket. After the incident, students poured over data to find out what happened, and it’s expected that due to the previous strain on the rocket air shafts formed around the nose cone which in turn caused pressure issues; hence pushing out our eggs.
Even with our disqualification, our kids learned and experienced a lot in Washington DC. During the competition our students had the opportunity to talk to and learn from companies such as Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, etc… They eagerly sat for speeches and participated in engineering tests and instruction. The ability to really be near these big companies showed our kids that it’s completely possible to go into a high-level science and engineering career.
We also had the opportunity to explore Washington DC, where we went to many of the museums, including the Science and Aerospace museum. For some of our kids this is the first time that they traveled, and it gave them the opportunity to feel a different way of life and experience our capital.
Again, our kids worked extremely hard to perform to the high level that they showed, but without help and support we wouldn’t have been able to compete and represent our community. We thank all of our donors and thank The David Douglas Educational Foundation for all of their support.