FaithManor Posted March 20, 2017 Share Posted March 20, 2017 They kicked out their last skype/video conferencing presentation, no concerns were expressed, they were congratulated for the quality of their documentation, and the engineering panel hinted that they hope they will be back next year. I am so proud of these kiddos. Launch Week is going to be a blast (ha ha) and NASA rocks out a lot of great festivities for the students so they are really looking forward to it! As of 5:30 am tomorrow, t-minus 14 days. 37 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bettyandbob Posted March 20, 2017 Share Posted March 20, 2017 Yay!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jen500 Posted March 20, 2017 Share Posted March 20, 2017 Wonderful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seasider Posted March 20, 2017 Share Posted March 20, 2017 I wanna go! Great job, team! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mommyoffive Posted March 20, 2017 Share Posted March 20, 2017 Awesome! Congrats!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TravelingChris Posted March 20, 2017 Share Posted March 20, 2017 We live in Hunstville and although we are retired military (were active duty when we moved here 5.5 years ago), we love having NASA here. This is the second place we have lived near a NASA place and it is great to be around NASA people. Congratulations on your team's selection! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FriedClams Posted March 20, 2017 Share Posted March 20, 2017 Awesome!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted March 20, 2017 Author Share Posted March 20, 2017 We live in Hunstville and although we are retired military (were active duty when we moved here 5.5 years ago), we love having NASA here. This is the second place we have lived near a NASA place and it is great to be around NASA people. Congratulations on your team's selection! Thanks! We have talked about retiring near Huntsville if we do not go overseas. It is one of our favorite places. But I have to say, last year when I launched my level 1 high power rocket at the rocketry workshop, it was 96 degrees and about, oh I don't know maybe a thousand percent humidity! So that was rough on this Michigander. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heatherwith4 Posted March 20, 2017 Share Posted March 20, 2017 I live in Huntsville, too. I love it here. :) Congratulations! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lilaclady Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Congratulations!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pam in CT Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Well done, team and its coach / champions! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TechWife Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Wonderful news - congrats to the entire team and to you and your family, who have invested so heavily in this adventure. What a great honor - I look forward to hearing all about Huntsville! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sugarfoot Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 That's fantastic! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anne Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Congratulations!!! That's an amazing accomplishment - so thrilled for all of you!!! Anne :hurray: :hurray: :hurray: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kroe1 Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Autographs, please. This is really cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanny Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Congratulations to your team! When I was on an assignment in Huntsville I remember going to a NASA visitors center (?) and I think they had an IMAX theater there. A Space Museum or something along those lines. Not as incredible as going to Kennedy Space Center, but I would go back there if I was in Huntsville. Good luck to your team in Rocket City! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted March 21, 2017 Author Share Posted March 21, 2017 (edited) Congratulations to your team! When I was on an assignment in Huntsville I remember going to a NASA visitors center (?) and I think they had an IMAX theater there. A Space Museum or something along those lines. Not as incredible as going to Kennedy Space Center, but I would go back there if I was in Huntsville. Good luck to your team in Rocket City!They get to tour Marshall Space Flight and Redstone Aresenal. This is normally restricted area, but one of the perks for the rocket teams who successfully complete the project. They will participate in the Rocket Fair at Von Braun Center and also attend an award banquet sponsored by Orbital ATK. NASA and Orbital Mark the week really special. Of course the big event is attempting the Mike high flight with the other teams, and getting to see the huge variation in types of rockets and scientific payloads. The kids have been working hard on their payload. They tried to build a solar powered habitat that would maintain Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches in sub freezing temperatures providing life support for 48 hrs. That has been hard! In order to be small enough to be contained in the payload body tube of the rocket, it can not be larger than 12.5" by 5" and must contain their food delivery system, humiliating system, heaters, etc. They wrote a great piece of arguing programming to transmit from the habit to their laptop and it gives them warning beeps if any system is not keeping up or the batteries are running low. Everything is working, and the data is being collected, but when winds are high - hello Michigan when you live so close to the lake which is the reason for all the DTE wind farms - it can only manage 16-20 hrs before th batteries are to low and the 60 degree minimum temp can no longer be maintain. They are still working on it and if temps rise here, they will put it out during the day to charge the batteries, and stick it in the freezer at night. Ya....The things you do for kids. Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches in my freezer! I would post photos but I have been unsuccessful shrinking them. So if you go to their website you can see photos or to our Facebook page. www.deforddazzlers.com Or search facebook for Deford Dazzlers 4H...We are the only people out there with that name. Thanks for the support everyone. I appreciate it. We have clawed our way along trying to build our science and math education group. In such a resistant, practically anti education culture, it has been like a salmon swimming up the falls. It is nice when we manage to flip our tails and make it to the top once in a while. ETA: Their Flight Readiness Review document was 214 pages of pure technical writing. We had very little input. They have reached the place where they understand what NASA needs from them, and they want to put it in an impressive form, really be competitive. Purdue U, Georgia Tech, and several other universities did not make as much effort. I have seen their documents posted to their websites and went, "Wow! They are not trying hard to win the university competition." (Vanderbilt, U of Louisville, Cornell...those three are BRUTAL competitors. I cannot wait for our kids to meet River City Rocketry out of U of L!) So if you have a moment, you can go to their website, click on NASA documents, click on FRR (I think it is named v2 for version 2) and download the PDF to make a quick perusal of...I swear these kids are going to find college writing to be cake walk when they get there. I have one middle schooler still struggling and his work is heavily editted by the high school girl on the team. And one high school boy who is mildly dyslexic so he does only dictation so he writes just a small part of the payload section, but the other four just kick it out, and the entire safety section was written by a 7th grade girl who just turned 13). At the beginning they needed a ton of help and guidance. By the time we got to this document and they self decided they wanted to best a few colleges, all we did was sit around helping them figure out formatting issues since Google docs can be tricky and frustrating. Apart from double checking their math for errors or helping them insert a table with a specific graphic or pull up a simulation from another program and take screen shot then import into the document, they had outgrown the need for intense supervision during the writing process. It was one of those glorious education moments when your students no longer need you because the skill was conquered, and you feel proud of their accomplishment, triumphant, and wistful all at once! Edited March 21, 2017 by FaithManor 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanny Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Awesome. Very interesting project. Sent from my SM-G355M using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zoo Keeper Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 (edited) Congratulations on your advancement! What an amazing project. :coolgleamA: :coolgleamA: Your team is very, very, cool. Two of my boys would be crazy over an opportunity like you have made happen for those kids and families. I would have been D O N E at the cockroaches, Faith. :leaving: Scientific progress can carry on without me. You are a stronger woman than I am. ;) Edited March 21, 2017 by Zoo Keeper Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanny Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 I do not have the words to explain to you how important this experience of working on a team is. On any engineering project, each person has to do their part and get it to work properly, or the project fails. If any of the members of the team eventually go into Engineering, this experience will help them and should be included on their resume, when looking for that first position. I remember watching the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, on Kennedy Space Center, with my (pregnant) wife, in May 2000. I was thinking to myself, "If I had worked on that project, my part of it would have been the size of a package of cigarettes". When things work properly that is a successful engineering project and the participants can be happy and proud that they worked on it. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted March 21, 2017 Author Share Posted March 21, 2017 Congratulations on your advancement! What an amazing project. :coolgleamA: :coolgleamA: Your team is very, very, cool. Two of my boys would be crazy over an opportunity like you have make happen for those kids and families. I would have been D O N E at the cockroaches, Faith. :leaving: Scientific progress can carry on without me. You are a stronger woman than I am. ;) Well, K on the team had been carrying for them until his family went on vacation so they came here. Then due to just never getting around to getting them back to him, they are here now and a week ago the cat knocked the lid off the aquarium and one asteo roach escaped the corps. We think the cat ate it. No signs of it have ever been found. But there are days when I think that I should move away! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caclcoca Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Congratulations!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twigs Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 :hurray: :party: :hurray: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted March 21, 2017 Author Share Posted March 21, 2017 (edited) I do not have the words to explain to you how important this experience of working on a team is. On any engineering project, each person has to do their part and get it to work properly, or the project fails. If any of the members of the team eventually go into Engineering, this experience will help them and should be included on their resume, when looking for that first position. I remember watching the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, on Kennedy Space Center, with my (pregnant) wife, in May 2000. I was thinking to myself, "If I had worked on that project, my part of it would have been the size of a package of cigarettes". When things work properly that is a successful engineering project and the participants can be happy and proud that they worked on it. Thanks Lanny! It is nice to have outside validation that what we do is important. Except for our 4H program director, one local journalist, and the parents of these kids, no one here has a positive word to say. It isn't that they say anything negative, it is that there is no vocal support. We live in such a backward area, and it is almost like the local community views us as the Pied Pipers who have come to lead their children to destruction. Very anti education here. Edited March 21, 2017 by FaithManor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unsinkable Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 I thought they were already accepted in October? You had a thread: "Our 4H rocket team is in. Huntsville or bust!" It's all so confusing. Plus you were asking for prayers for fundraising bc they needed $3000 for the trip. So did they fundraiser before they got in? :confused: They have been accepted to NASA Student Launch Rocket Challenge for 2016/17. Their proposed scientific payload is to deploy a habitat that will sustain insect/invertebrate life for a week in the freezing Michigan winter and transmit data back to their laptop. So the rocket has to soar as close to a mile as they can get it, and when it deploys its secondary parachute at 800 ft., deploys the habitat which will remain tethered to the rocket for the purposes of easy retrieval - needing only one GPS transmitter to track the project instead of dual which gets pretty expensive - but rights itself after landing so the solar panels that charge the battery to run the electronics faces the correct direction. They are very excited about it! When they have their website up and running, I will post the url here so that anyone who is interested can track their progress this year and then watch video of their launches. If everything goes well, we will be in Huntsville, AL April 4-9 to launch with NASA, 17 other middle/high school teams, and 32 universities. Think good thoughts for them please. They have to raise $3000 through the xourse of the next 4-5 months which given the lower income of this area and rural population base is no easy feat! We are committed to making this happen, and assumed from the beginning that our credit card would take a beating! LOL it already has, but we hope to at least get some of the expenses reimbursed. So god vibes, prayers, would be much appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted March 21, 2017 Author Share Posted March 21, 2017 I thought they were already accepted in October? You had a thread: "Our 4H rocket team is in. Huntsville or bust!" It's all so confusing. Plus you were asking for prayers for fundraising bc they needed $3000 for the trip. So did they fundraiser before they got in? :confused: They got into the program and had to build the payload, design the rocket, build the subscale, fly the subscale, produce all of their documentation, and then get approval for the full scale, then fly that, report all of their data, and THEN they got permission to fly it in Huntsville. There are many stages of this project all of which cost a LOT of money. But if they had not been successful with their full scale rocket or had flight instability or messed up their documentation, then they would have had to close out the year and not fly in Huntsville. The program begins in September and ends in May with their Post Launch Report. So it is a multi stage project with each level having to get approval to move to the next. Since there is only two weeks from approval to the Huntsville launch week, one has to fundraise ahead. There is a disclaimer with each one that any budget over runs or if the team does not travel, will go to funding more science projects in the county for not only our 4H club but others. Locals know this ahead. As it is, we were able to write educational grants for most of it. The project cost about $2250.00 and we will have $2000.00 in the rocket and payload. It was a bare bones budget compared to most teams, and in reality my dh and I put in about $1000.00 of our own money when NASA wanted them to buy a different large scale parachute which was VERY pricey and a different GPS tracker which was even pricier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unsinkable Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 (edited) They got into the program and had to build the payload, design the rocket, build the subscale, fly the subscale, produce all of their documentation, and then get approval for the full scale, then fly that, report all of their data, and THEN they got permission to fly it in Huntsville. There are many stages of this project all of which cost a LOT of money. But if they had not been successful with their full scale rocket or had flight instability or messed up their documentation, then they would have had to close out the year and not fly in Huntsville. The program begins in September and ends in May with their Post Launch Report. So it is a multi stage project with each level having to get approval to move to the next. Since there is only two weeks from approval to the Huntsville launch week, one has to fundraise ahead. There is a disclaimer with each one that any budget over runs or if the team does not travel, will go to funding more science projects in the county for not only our 4H club but others. Locals know this ahead. As it is, we were able to write educational grants for most of it. The project cost about $2250.00 and we will have $2000.00 in the rocket and payload. It was a bare bones budget compared to most teams, and in reality my dh and I put in about $1000.00 of our own money when NASA wanted them to buy a different large scale parachute which was VERY pricey and a different GPS tracker which was even pricier. So in October, it was a stage 1 acceptance or a provisional acceptance based upon successful completion of the next step? Like if they failed on any of the subsequent stages, they really wouldn't be going to Huntsville? (Edited to include "?") Edited March 21, 2017 by unsinkable Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted March 21, 2017 Author Share Posted March 21, 2017 So in October, it was a stage 1 acceptance or a provisional acceptance based upon successful completion of the next step. Like if they failed on any of the subsequent stages, they really wouldn't be going to Huntsville. That's why I said Huntsville or bust. Most high school teams make it all the way to the last round because there is a LOT of support. It is that last one where you have to really shine. But teams that aren't allowed to launch are invited to attend the other events such as the Rocket Fair at Von Braun should they choose to travel which I think we would have chosen to do so depending on if parents wanted their kids to miss a week of school if they weren't going to get to launch. But our team performed very well so they get to actually attempt their mile high launch in Huntsville. I don't know how many of the 20 other middle/high school teams will, or how many of the 50 university teams. I think a fair number of them are likely to make it. I know that Notre Dame made it. I know of one university that had a pretty disastrous full scale flight, and as of February 25th was frantically rebuilding and re-engineering in order to get another one in the air with successful data by the deadline. Given the nature of the flaw, I am not certain if they will come through or not. Some of the things the students have to prove meet minimum requirements: Static Stability Margin above 2.0 Exit Rail Velocity at or above 52 f/s Coefficient of drag on their parachutes Maximum drift from the stand less than 2500 ft. Plus kinetic energy analysis of the main components at landing, center of pressure, center of gravity This is where all the technical writing comes in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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