SHIPPENSBURG, Pennsylvania USA — Three Shippensburg Area Senior High School students used their brain power to create a little "rocket science."

Collectively, their imagination and genius led them all the way to a national contest in Virginia this month, where they managed to place among the top teams in the competition.

In October, seniors Scott Neidrick, Lucas Kalathas and Amber Keeseman decided to form a SASHS Rocket Team to build a model rocket from scratch that could carry a raw egg and return it safely to the ground, all while staying in the air for exactly 45 seconds and reaching an altitude of at least 850 feet.

Blasting the big time: Scott Neidrick, 17, left, Amber Keeseman, 18, and Lucas Kalathas, 18, are part of a rocket team out of Shippensburg Area Senior High School. They entered their homemade rockets into a national competition on May 19. Photo: Public Opinion/Ryan Blackwell.

Neidrick described the project as "complexity within simplicity."

"It was no small project by any means," said Kalathas, the team's leader who was responsible for the rocket's design. "It took hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars, and we had (verbal) fights between us when our opinions clashed. But through it all, we stuck together."

The group had to meet the goal to earn a spot in the fifth annual Team America Rocketry Challenge, deemed the largest model rocket showcase on the planet.

The road to the challenge certainly had its share of bumps for the team, and it put a dent in their pockets.

The team paid more than $1,500 of their own money for materials to build the rocket. Their rocket had also undergone multiple changes in its design and launch process before it was finished.

"We had to trust and depend and lean on each other," said Neidrick, the team's chief construction and recovery engineer. "It taught me about never giving up. Accomplishment and success result from the combination of dreams and will."

They changed the rocket's design at least four times over the course of four months before they constructed a finished rocket that used two separate parachutes.

Kalathas said the team also added a paper tube midsection so the rocket could remain light and repairable.

After a few practice launch attempts — a handful of which were unsuccessful — the team had finished the rocket in April and submitted qualification scores to the rocketry challenge committee for review.

To no surprise of theirs, the group was invited to participate in the national competition in The Plains, Va., which was held on May 19.

The SASHS Rocket Team had a chance to compete for $60,000 in scholarships and prizes, which would be shared by the top 10 teams in the competition.

"It was exciting. We got to see the different approaches people made (with their rocket experiments)," Kalathas said. "We didn't know what to expect, since we hadn't been there before."

Though they didn't finish in the top 10 at the competition, the SASHS Rocket Team finished 30th among the 100 final teams, putting them in the top 5 percent of the nation's ranked teams in the contest.

About 7,000 students on 690 teams from 48 states and the District of Columbia took part in the qualifying rounds of the competition this year.

SASHS' Rocket team ranked the highest of any Pennsylvania team in the competition. "Finishing in the top 5 percent of the nation is pretty good," Kalathas said.

Keeseman said the team's performance in the competition was gratifying.

"We proved to ourselves we could do what we set out to accomplish," she said.

Copyright © 2007, Chambersburg Public Opinion.