00:02Students from Australia, pretty much every state and territory, as well as New Zealand
00:07and as far away as India came about a thousand kilometres west of Sydney to a remote sheep
00:11station to launch rockets as part of the Australian University's rocket competition.
00:15And so this competition has been running since 2019.
00:18It had a bit of a hiatus there for a few years, came back last year and has grown significantly
00:23since then.
00:24Now these teams, there's about 20 rockets that were attempted to be launched.
00:28They range from five to about 200 people in each one of these teams.
00:32So the students will design from scratch, build on the day or in the previous couple of days
00:37and then launch these rockets into an area or up to an area of 10 kilometres in height.
00:43So fairly significant.
00:44They're working on these rockets, some for one or two years.
00:47And the aim is to get closest to either 5,000 feet, 10,000 feet or 30,000 feet.
00:53And I spoke to the director of the competition as well, Jennifer He, and she said it's not
00:59only about the rockets, it's also about a lot of these students building connections within
01:03their aerospace engineering industries and the importance of that and as well as connecting
01:08with industry leads as well who are here sponsoring the event.
01:12Have a listen to what she had to say.
01:14It also serves as a platform to showcase the talented students that spend all year, several
01:22years during their degree, whilst very young and mostly inexperienced, designing, building
01:29and then launching their rockets.
01:33So Bill, they had to withstand the Australian heat, the sun and the flies as you are right
01:38now.
01:39How did it all go?
01:41Well, there were fairly mixed results.
01:43I spoke to the team at the University of Technology in Sydney, and they got within 40 feet of the
01:4910,000 feet mark.
01:50So very impressive there.
01:51I think the Australian National University won the overall event though, and others though
01:56struggled to launch.
01:57Unfortunately, one rocket did take off and shortly after takeoff completely exploded.
02:02And some of these rockets are worth tens of thousands of dollars.
02:04So yeah, very disappointing for them.
02:06But I think overall, most of the students were pretty happy to be out there.
02:09If it wasn't their first time last year, it was their first time this year.
02:13And just experiencing outback Australia.
02:15Yes, as you said, the flies, the heat, the dust, the wind, all of it was quite an experience
02:20for them.
02:21And I think they enjoyed it.
02:22And there's hope that this continues to grow for years to come.
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