"Rocket science" at Akins High School

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Remember those scenes from Mission Control during the Apollo moon shots and Space Shuttle launches?

Scientists, engineers and technicians as far as the eye could see, all sporting headphones and microphones, sitting on the edges of their chairs? Odds are, it did not occur to you at the time, but at one point or another, every one of them was a high school student.

Lately though, there has been a lot of hand wringing, as educators and politicians bemoan the downhill slide in science and math education in the United States. Who are the boys and girls who will grow up to replace those people in Mission Control?

Well, some of them may be hunching over work benches and computers in a large classroom at Akins High School in deep South Austin.

"Some of these classes these kids are doing, it's a worksheet or a book report or, you know, something that's maybe not so fun," said Akins High School rocket science class teacher Kyle Voge. "Here they get to do something. I mean, they're going to build a rocket."

This is the third year Akins students have been part of a huge rocket launch just south of Fredericksburg in nearby Gillespie County. In the first and second years, an Akins team managed to launch their rocket, only to endure a malfunction that prevented the deployment of the parachute that should have gently returned the rocket to the ground. Instead, impact came at around 200 miles an hour, tearing the rockets to bits.

Design and procedural changes this year are aimed at preventing a repeat of such a disappointing result.

"We've been over this like 20 times and we're still going to go over it some more," said student Sabrina Trevino. "We've got calculations for if it's windy, if it's calm, cool and everything.

"The experience we get from that is immense; it's great," said student John Ferguson. "And for that fact alone, whether we fail, whether we succeed, it doesn't really matter. I mean, in the long run, we'll take what we got and we will move on."

Teams from 26 Texas high schools will launch 46 rockets at the Rockets '09 event, Thursday through Sunday of next week. Many of the launches are designed to carry a craft to exactly one mile high. Others will cover some 12,000 feet, breaking the sound barrier in the process. The public is welcome.