OLYMPIA

AEROSPACE

CLUB

We are a premier team of 6th to 12th grade students from Olympia, Washington, who are interested in aerospace. Our mission is to empower and inspire students to pursue a career in STEM, through designing, building, and flying high-performing model rockets, inviting guest speakers from NASA and the University of Washington, and competing in The American Rocketry Challenge (the largest model rocketry competition in the world). Our club is often the first place many students experience rocketry and the fundamentals of aerospace engineering in school,

Inspiring the next generation of engineers through rocketry, flight, and hands-on STEM outreach.

16

TARC Teams

18th

2025 national rank out of over 1,000 teams

130+

Total Launches

2000+

Students Reached

Our club is deeply grateful for the support of our partners and community supporters:

Additional thank you to the Puget Sound Silent Flyers for proving a launch field and supporting our mission!

It's not rocket science... except it is

With the Aerospace Club, rocket science doesn’t have to be hard. It can be a fun, exciting, and educational experience. Sure, there are challenges, but nothing a team of bright students can’t solve! Even though our students aren’t sending missions to the moon (yet), our model rockets teach students all the fundamentals that real aerospace engineers use on a daily basis, such as aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, simulation, mathematics, and more.

The Competitive Team

Our club revolves around competing in The American Rocketry Challenge (TARC), which is an annual competition in the United States that engages students in the exciting field of aerospace engineering and rocketry. Students design, build, test, and redesign a model rocket to meet predefined altitude, timing, and other requirements, all while returning an egg safely to Earth!

2027 ARC Engineering Specifications

Source: https://rocketrychallenge.org/wp-content/uploads/ARC-Rules-2027-FINAL.pdf

Total Flight Time: 37 to 40 seconds

Target Apogee: 243 meters

Payload: TWO Raw eggs, (55-63 grams each), up to 45 millimeters in diameter
Two body tube diameters, one MUST be T-80 (66mm) and at least 12 inches long.
Minimum Rocket Length: 650 millimeters
Minimum Rocket Diameter: 47 millimeters
Maximum Rocket Gross Takeoff Weight: 650 grams
Maximum Impulse: 80 Newton-seconds

The Recreational Team

We recognize that not everybody is ready to commit to an intensive rocket competition and simply desire to “get a feel” for rocketry and aerospace as a whole.

Thus, the remainder of our members compose the Recreational team, where students watch launches and come and go every week to build model rocket kits for the sake of enjoyment and exposure. All for free, of course!

Above: Photos from a recreational team build session on November 15th, 2024.

"These students have such an impressive array of skills and truly interdisciplinary approach to problem-solving that it goes well beyond the principles of aerospace engineering" -Dan Needlands, Puget Sound Silent Flyers President