Our event for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing is coming up on Saturday, July 20th. We will be running a "fly it - take it" event on the archery field adjacent to the St. Louis Science Center's McDonnell Planetarium, in conjunction with the other festivities SLSC is hosting. We will have 72 built model rockets ready to put in the hands of visitors as they take part in a combined spot-landing / precision duration competition - the spot-landing target being, of course, the moon! The first place winner of this competition will take home a trophy that includes an actual space-flown piece of foil from the Apollo 11 spacecraft, generously donated by Earl Mullins of the Space Museum in Bonne Terre, MO. If you've been around the club long enough to remember the 45th anniversary event we did in 2014 with Gene Kranz, you may recall that Mr. Mullins donated a similar piece of Apollo 11 space-flown foil as a grand prize then as well.

To make this event a success, we are looking for volunteers willing to help out on the day of the event. Setup will begin at 8:00am, the competition event will run from 9:30am to 2:00pm, and we should be cleaned up and done by 3:00 or 3:30pm. We will need volunteers of all levels of rocketry experience to help with registering visitors for the contest, timing and scoring the rocket flights, and talking to the public about hobby rocketry and our club.

As an incentive, SLRA club president David Kovar is making a generous donation of his own - an Estes Saturn V flying model rocket kit (1:100 scale) to be raffled off among our volunteers! SLRA would like to thank St. Louis Science Center for donating the rocket kits and motors for the competition, Mr. Mullins for donating the Apollo 11 foil for the grand prize, and Dave for donating the prize for the volunteer raffle.

If you would like to volunteer, please email John Buckley at jbuckley1996@gmail.com.