Everything was against the Kentwood Astronomical Society’s efforts to launch a rocket on April 2.

The club’s adviser, math teacher Summer Cambridge, said they had planned to launch at Pacific Raceways in order to qualify for Team Americas Rocketry Challenge May 15 in Virginia.

But, a motorcycle crash on the drag strip that killed the rider closed Pacific Raceways down, so they had to look at other options.

“We got two qualification flights and we did them the day before they were due, on Easter,” said club co-president Reed Tillotson. “Our first launch was a failure. That one came down too fast. It if comes down too fast at an unsafe velocity, then you fail.”

At that point, they had one shot, because they had missed the first deadline that would have gained them three qualification flights.

Of course, getting off that first flight required driving up to 60 acres in Redmond because it was too windy in this part of county to safely launch.

The second flight, Tillotson explained, got a score of around 16 and “the lower the points the better.”

Still, it was a tense time because even after the second successful launch they weren’t sure if they were going to even qualify.

Alyssa Trinh, a senior and co-president of KAS, said she first heard about rocketry during Washington Aerospace Scholars which she participated in during her junior year at Kentwood.

“During the WAS week … I got an introduction to rocketry,” Trinh said. “One of the activities was building rockets and I thought it was cool.”

In the fall, she pitched the idea to her fellow KAS members, who embraced the idea. Many of the guys on the eight-member squad are Boy Scouts who, they explained, are quite interested in fire and rockets.

Nick Tillotson, Reed’s younger brother, is also part of the team. He explained why Trinh’s proposal was appealing.

“The main thing I like about rocketry… it is essentially challenging because the motors… are ridiculous,” he said. “You have to design them so they are reliable. And, it’s always nice to see a ball of flame coming out of the back of a paper tube.”

The third Tillotson brother involved, Lee, also a freshman is the “motor loader” who assembles the motors.

In the spring, they met with Brian Whitemarsh, who has served as their National Association of Rocketry advisor.

“He said, ‘You guys are really behind. What are you guys doing?’,” Trinh said. “We started working on it in late January.”

The first deadline to complete the first qualification flight was March 15 and they had to submit their qualification flight scores by April 5.

More than 7,000 students participate in TARC in locally qualifying flights, according to TARC’s website, with more than 600 teams vying for one of the Top 100 slots to compete at the national event May 15 in Virginia.

“Every year the competition has a different objective,” team member Kyle Mullins said. “This year the objective was to take an egg and altimeter in the payload section of the rocket to 800 feet. Then here’s the tricky part, it has to come down by streamer. Streamers are way harder to deal with because you have to have them really big.”

Yes, streamers, more commonly made out of crepe paper for use in party decorations.

Except the KAS rocketry team used 2 millimeter mylar for the streamers.

“The tricky part about mylar is getting the kinks out of it,” Mullins said. “Then the payload section of the rocket with egg and altimeter has to come down between 40 and 45 seconds. The egg has to not be broken or cracked. The lowest score you can get is zero. A perfect flight we be 825 feet at 42 and a half seconds.”

Mullins explained that the KAS rocket has two sections. There is the payload section with the egg and the altimeter which has to come down by streamer.

Then there is the booster section with the engine and fins.

“Our booster section, it has a slight issue with the parachute not always coming out,” Mullins said. “So, the parachute didn’t pop out, so the rocket did what’s called a flat spin. It still came down safely, but, we weren’t sure if (the second qualification flight) was going to count.”

Trinh said that Whitemarsh was honest with the folks at TARC about the parachute failure and the team was told to send in their score for the qualification flight.

Then the team had to wait it out.

“A few days later he said ‘Congratulations’ (in an e-mail) … in like 30 point font,” Trinh said.

As soon as they found out they were going to the national competition, Mullins said, they sent out an e-mail blast requesting help.

They tried to fundraise by selling miniature rocket kits but they didn’t make much money with it so they ended up giving the kits away.

“We previously had received a $750 donation from Aerojet, which is a local company,” Trinh said. “And Brian showed up with a $250 check (at their first meeting) even though he had never met us.”

KAS is still accepting donations of cash or materials for the rocket. Send an e-mail to kwastronomy@gmail.com if you want to help out.

In the meantime, the team will try and get in three or four more launches before packing up the rocket as well as the motors and ship it all separately, because as Cambridge explained you can’t take the motors on a flight and it’s best to send the rocket tube out ahead of time.

The team also includes freshmen Trace Hislop, Rachel Judkins and Lucas Shumaker.

All eight members of the team along with their advisor will head out to the competition in about two weeks with the hope to qualify in the top 20.

Each team gets one flight. Teams who are in the top 20 after that launch get a second flight and from that the winners are chosen.

There are $60,000 in cash and scholarships to split between the top finishers while NASA invites top teams to participate in its Student Launch Initiative, an advanced rocketry program.

Members of the Aerospace Industries Association, which sponsors the challenge in partnership with NAR, such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have sponsored additional prizes such as scholarship money and a trip to an international air show.

For more information about TARC, log on to www.rocketcontest.org.