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Flathead Valley Rocket Rally Takes Flight

Eighth-graders from around valley participated in fourth annual event, which teaches students aerospace and rocketry fundamentals

By Myers Reece
Eighth-grader Dathan Luehr prepares his soda bottle rocket for liftoff during the fourth annual Flathead Valley Rocket Rally at Glacier High School on May 23, 2019. Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon

It’s not rocket science. Or, actually, in this case it is.

For the last four years, eighth-graders from rural schools around the county have convened at the Flathead Valley Rocket Rally to showcase the results of the students’ months-long efforts to learn the principles of rocketry science and build their own soda-bottle rockets.

The rally, a competition with multiple categories, features the students’ pressurized rockets shooting into the sky at Glacier High School and, if everything goes right, gently parachuting back to Earth. In the “raw egg survival” category, the rockets are supposed to soar as high as possible and then descend with an egg intact.

Alison Godfrey, a retired rocketry engineer who served as technical lead building rockets for Lockheed Martin for the Missile Defense Agency, organizes and secures funding for the program, which isn’t part of the schools’ regular curriculum. The grants integrate rocketry and aerospace learning into the participating schools’ programming.

Godfrey provides all the buses and other associated costs, including free lunch for the rally’s students and the pricey launch pads, so that schools don’t pay a dime. Funding comes from a number of sponsors, led by the Applied Materials Foundation.

This year’s rally, on May 23, featured Cayuse Prairie, Fair-Mont-Egan, Kila, Marion, Smith Valley and West Valley. Godfrey hopes to eventually expand the program to every school in the valley, although that will take considerably more money and volunteers, so she’s building it piecemeal.

“We’re trying to inspire them to continue on with science and engineering, hopefully inspire them to go into some kind of aerospace, rocketry field or any other engineering field,” she said. “And, also, rockets are just a ton of fun.”

Ashley Hadley, a teacher at Cayuse Prairie School, said her students, divided into teams, spent almost every day for six weeks working on the project, from learning rocket-science fundamentals to crafting and tweaking their rockets.

“They were totally immersed in it,” she said. “It was a cool experience.”

“It’s a great program,” said Marycaye Dover, an eight-grade teacher at West Valley School. “They get so into it. You can feel the energy.”

“(Godfrey and her husband) want to get students, especially young women, involved in engineering, get them inspired,” she added.

In addition to the Applied Materials Foundation, other sponsors for this year’s event included Gryphon Technologies, Parkside Credit Union, TrailWest Bank, Super 1 Foods, Glacier Bank, Three Rivers Bank, The Home Depot, Staples, Tire-Rama, NAPA Auto Parts and Domino’s Pizza.