Helping Abbeyfield School’s Rocket club blast off!
Baltimore Innovations is proud to continue supporting scientists of the future by sponsoring Abbeyfield schools rocket building team for the third consecutive year.
The rocket building project at the school is run by teachers Bill Lansbury and Sarah Wright comprising two motivated groups of students participating in the UKROC competition during this academic year. The students worked hard on accomplishing a good design, manufacturing good performing rockets and enjoyed participating in a UKROC national rocketry competition.
The students were set the challenge of designing a rocket that could fly to 820 feet into the air, and deliver an egg safely back down to Earth in 45 seconds without it breaking. The further the rockets were from these totals the more points they received and, like golf, it’s lowest score wins!
The first stage of the 2024 competition, the South-West regionals, were hosted by Abbeyfield School. Over 20 teams were in attendance and there were three automatic qualification spots up for grabs. Their two teams performed excellently, both achieving low enough scores to reach the national finals. In fact, their team of Year 12 students achieved the second-best score in the whole country, receiving 2 points for a perfect time and near-perfect altitude!
In the 2024 national finals, however, disaster struck. It was a blustery day in Buckminster at the British Model Flying Association and sadly both rockets’ shock cords snapped in the high winds during parachute deployment. It was a fantastic trip nonetheless and both teams have learned a great deal, ready to compete again next year with a brand new set of rules and a brand new set of rocket designs!
However in 2025 the two Abbeyfield rocketry teams competed in the UKROC National Finals. The weather conditions were superb. One of the teams came 4th place in the country out of 163 teams originally and won best team name (massive white rocket).
