mentored a girls team that went to Nationals this year...it was a group of middle schoolers and it was their first year (to be a team much less qualifY0. They started out in the top 100 and rose to the top 60. They've already got plans for attacking this next year! My hubby was so proud you would have thought they were each one of our kids.

also went to Nationals although I don't know how they placed in the competition. The group was organized from the physics class at the high school in George West (not Georgetown). I was surprised to learn that there were three physics classes being offered now because they only offered physics in alternate years since there were only 330 students in the school. The enrollment didn't grow much after I graduated about three decades ago.

I don't know if the contest existed back then, but I probably would have been on the team if one was created because I was the wiz of my physics class and the strongest math student in the school. I imagine that it was too cost prohibitive to hold that type of competition and my high school had a policy of no out-of-state trips, so I doubt that we would have gone if we qualified.

FWIW, my BIL was the president of the rocket club in one of the Houston suburbs located near NASA.

Please pass the news onto your husband, I'm certain that he will be interested to hear the news!

We were bound to film cameras. I've had a few launches that were in that range but I never flew unless it was clear blue sky.

Kudos to the kids. It puts a smile on my face to see that the youngns are picking up the slack from us old timers.

What goes up must come down, and part of the contest requires the safe return of that darn egg back to earth! The students have to design a parachute system to deploy while also insulating the egg and conforming with rules specifying the maximum weight of the payloads.

Most people have heard of the class project in home economics where students have to take babysit an egg for a week without cracking it or breaking it to demonstrate the skills necessary to be a good parent. However, there are a few of us that remember the episode from South Park where the same project was conducted for promoting parental skills, but with a "twist":

The teacher, Mr. Garrison was a repressed gay who refused to admit his homosexuality. He was against legislation that would have allowed gay parents to adopt children so when he designated the parental teams, he divided the teams into the classic boy/girl pairs. However, to try and prove his point that gay parents were unfit for adoption he paired Stan and Kyle together as a parental unit. During the week that they were taking care of "the egg", Mr. Garrison did everything possible to undermine Stan and Kyle to support his homophobic agenda. At the end of the week, the children frantically raced to the Capitol with "the egg". I won't be a spoiler and reveal the outcome of the episode so you'll have to find the episode on DVD or watch a lot of South Park reruns to learn the conclusion!