M-SET’s rocket team soars to Washington, D.C.

Sophomore Benjy Yang, freshman Ivan France and junior Mark Van Aken pose for a photo with their rocket at NASA Ames.

The Mechanical Science Engineering Team (M-SET) is closing this year with a moderately successful robotics season, but with an amazing rocketry season for the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC), qualifying for the national finals to be held on May 14 in Washington, D.C.

M-SET claimed 12th out of 50 teams at the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Seattle Regional on March 17-19 and 29th out of 56 teams at the FRC Silicon Valley Regional on March 31 to April 2. The TARC team, which consists of four M-SET’s members, will fight for a chance to win $60,000 in prizes and scholarships, as well as a trip to the International Air Show in Paris, France.

Named “Falcon Punch,” the TARC team was among the top 100 out of 607 high school teams from across the country. The objective of this year’s challenge was to design and build a rocket that could reach 750 feet and stay aloft for 40 to 45 seconds using a 15-inch diameter parachute. The rocket also holds an egg payload that must be returned to the ground unharmed.

Scores are determined by how far off the rocket was from the goals with the lowest score being the winning one. “Falcon Punch” had its first qualifying launch on March 27 at NASA Ames with a score of 18. On April 3, the first launch of the day at NASA Ames scored a perfect 0, but the team had not declared the launch to be a qualifying flight. The second qualifying launch scored 16 and the final scored 7.

The TARC team will be one of three teams from California and the only team from Northern California to qualify for nationals.

When sophomore Benjamin Yang, the captain of the team, heard the amazing news, he said it was “great to know that all of [the team’s] hard work finally paid off.”

He said it was difficult in the beginning due to poor weather conditions.

“We missed many launches due to being rained out, leaving us with barely any practice launches to get the right combination of parts,” he said.

However, the team dealt with this by spending the time tinkering with Rocksim, a rocket simulation program, Yang said.

“We had difficulty even with the simulator because it tends to be more generous when estimating max altitude and flight time,” he said. “It’s hard to build something that actually works in reality when you can’t test it in reality.”

Besides TARC, the rest of M-SET has been working on summer projects as well as talking with current and potential sponsors.