Monday, April 7, 2014

Rocket Girl - For Real!


When I asked Sarah aka Rocket Girl to give me some info on her Solar Car for this blog, this is what she had to say about that!

Solarcar was something that started off as a fascination- you mean a solar powered car? that I can drive?? cool! And turned into more of what some might call a "hobby" other's may call and "obsession".  Some days it's all I talk or think about, and that goes for nights as well- I either dream about it, or dont sleep at all worrying about it. 




Whatever you classify it as, it's probably one of the coolest thing's I've been apart of. I'm currently on my third year on the team and am more excited about it as ever. We get to build a race car, that is powered solely by the sun, with our own hands. And what's even cooler, is we get to then race our student built car against other teams from across America and Canada. And we manage to do both of these things quite well- I might add. By no means are we the most advanced, or highest funded team out there, but we hang in there with the big engineering schools across the nation and last year we even placed second. Oh I can still taste first place, it was such a close race. 


This year we are building what is anticipated to be a better, more powerful, more efficient car than our last one (*knock on wood* *please don't jinx us now, we've worked so hard for this*) and we hope to do notably well(win) in this summer's two races which will have  more and tougher competitors than our previous race. This summer we will be racing on a Formula One Track in Austin Tx, for a three day race where we race for 8 hours straight each day for a total of 24 hours. We will get a day off to travel and then begin our next race which is a cross country race that will span 7 states in 8 days, once again racing for about 8 hours a day. This race is exhausting but exciting.


I am so grateful to be able to have such an awesome opportunity while in college (it's making grad school a bit more bearable), and I'm even more grateful to be leading a team that has already accomplished so much. To be "part of the team" and support our efforts click here, and you can follow us on Face Book

You Go Rocket Girl - Love Sam -aka Kate, Jan or Ginger (shown here with the Red Bird at the Bloomington, IL leg of the race two years ago)

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