Students and rockets headed home after event

The winners have been named, the students are home, dusty but happy with the experience of the 2023 Spaceport America Cup where whether they earned awards or not, they learned and made long-term connections.

It’s all about teamwork, said Cliff Olmsted, president of the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA), the organizing entity for the cup. Not only do the collegiate students need to have the engineering skills to assemble their rockets, they also must address a lot of other logistics just to arrive in New Mexico.

“They are learning all the disciplines,” Olmsted said. “To be able to travel here with a rocket, not only do you have to accomplish the engineering feat, you also have to understand the business, logistics, fundraising – all those kinds of things – so it all comes together because we only have one week.”

Olmsted said with teams arriving from, Malaysia, Australia, Taiwan, Turkey, Egypt, India, Mexico, Canada and across the United States, the students get a huge takeaway of experience.

“With everybody together you get that passion and the energy around the excitement of what they are doing,” Olmsted said, “and not just with one team but with over a hundred teams.”

This year, he said, there were more students and teams than ever. About 116 teams and approximately 1,550 students came to Las Cruces and Spaceport America to participate in the event.

Spaceport America Director Scott McLaughlin, said the total cost to put on the event is approximately $400,000 and last year, when there were less than 100 teams participating, the economic impact was around $1.5 million.

Not only do students flow into the community for the week, there are also judges and recruiters for companies such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic who are also sponsors for the event.

“We had 30 sponsors, and they are all recruiting,” McLaughlin said. "I’ve heard some of these companies say this is their number one recruiting event of the year. Otherwise, they have to travel to smaller events or just one school to recruit.”

Bill Hanson with ESRA was the head of competitions operations this year. He was responsible for rules and judging. He said there were 50 judges from all over the country on the job this year.

“Los Alamos sent us 10 judges,” he said. “We get them from sponsors – Sandia Labs, NASA, Virgin Galactic – also just regular local people.”

There are detailed score rubrics in place to use for the judging.

“In the technical reports we are looking that the teams are not just buying parts from vendors and putting them together,” Hanson said.  “It’s an engineering competition so we want to see teams who, every step of the way, they have set their goals.”

Visit the ESRA YouTube channel to watch the competition and the awards ceremony.