AMARILLO, Texas USA — They've crashed a few rockets and broken even more eggs, but members of Canyon High School's Canyon Rocket Design club are getting ready to soar at a national competition.

Katy Good, Kris Field, Seth Bernard and Will Walker make up one of 100 teams that will compete in the finals of the Team America Rocketry Challenge on May 17 in The Plains, Va.

The competition pits teams against each other in a quest to design and build a model rocket and use it to lift a payload of two raw eggs for as close to 45 seconds total flight time and 750 feet in the air and then parachute the eggs to the ground unbroken.

Though some earlier attempts have racked up the cracked eggs, the team remains confident that they will do well.

"The hardest part was the redesigning of the rocket," said Field, 18, who is the club's president. "After test flights, because of miscalculations, one of the rockets crashed about a week before our qualifying and we had to rebuild it, basically in a day.

"The parachute was tangled up and it free fell. We learned from those mistakes, and another one of our problems was actually weight."

Good, 17, said the hardest part of the project was building the rocket.

"We're still test flying and there are a few specifications - weight and aerodynamics - adjusting that a little bit," she said. "Probably the hardest part is getting the rocket where we wanted it to be."

The team competed against 643 teams from around the nation for a shot at the national competition. Field said the team is ranked among the top 10 in the country, based on its qualifying score.

"We're still working to redesign the rocket to get it closer to the 750 feet and the time," Field said. "This is a fun way to learn about physics."

Also up for grabs is $60,000 in scholarships. The winning team gets a trip to the Farnborough Air Show near London in July.

Both Field and Walker interned at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston last year.

"I've been interested in rocketry for the past year," Walker said. "Last summer, I went to a NASA program at the Johnson Space Center. We planned a mock mission to Mars, and that's what sparked my interest in model rocketry. It's a lot of fun. This is the world's biggest model rocket competition. We want to win and go to England, but the biggest for us is to go to the Nationals."

To raise money for their trip to Virginia and buy supplies, they're selling ad space on the rocket for $30. So far, they've raised about $900 and have another $2,000 to go.

Copyright © 2008, Amarillo Globe-News.