By Melissa Milburn

Special to the Reporter

A team of aspiring rocket scientists, led by 15-year-old Mercer Islander Ryan Ressmeyer, have successfully designed and flown their qualification rockets for the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC).

Ryan, who’s been launching rockets for most of his life, was one of a dozen students from The Bush School’s rocketry class who flew self-designed creations without breaking a single (raw) egg payload.

The elective class is taught by Ryan and his father, Roger Ressmeyer, founder of the Visions of Tomorrow Foundation.

In his spare time, the elder Ressmeyer has been teaching students how to design, test and launch rockets for 13 years.

This local rocket launch comes just a week after two major commercial rocket explosions in Florida and California.

“It is important students learn to move forward despite temporary setbacks in rocketry,” says Roger Ressmeyer, who is a world-renowned photographer and filmmaker. “Scientific innovation, design and exploration is our future, and rocketry is part of this vision.”

At the competitive TARC event next May, 100 high school teams will compete by designing similar rockets to the ones Ryan and his team built with the same specifications.

These include flying a raw egg to 800-feet, verifying height with an onboard altimeter, and landing it within a number of seconds without  breaking the egg.

The TARC competition is sponsored by NASA and other aerospace companies, including Boeing.