The Flying Start Challenge is a contest run by Aerospace businesses and organisations in the South West of England for local secondary schools which aims to help develop science and engineering skills in young people whilst promoting careers in engineering. The Challenge, which has been running for more than a decade, involves upwards of 500 students from 30+ schools annually.
The sponsoring companies are Safran Landing Systems, Airbus, Atkins, GE Aerospace, MBDA, Dowty Propellers and Leonardo.
The Challenge is open to pupils in Years 7 to 9 who are organised into teams of 4 with the aim of "designing and building a hand-launched glider to fly as far and as straight as possible". Each team is supported by graduates, apprentices and trainees from the sponsor companies, with lessons on flight dynamics, design, manufacture, and testing, in addition to some practical advice on their glider designs.
Teams selected to represent their schools have the opportunity to compete at a Regional Final where they are judged on the distance their gliders fly as well as a poster presentation where they explain the design decisions. Each of the 3 regions (Bristol, Gloucestershire, and Yeovil) host their own Regional Finals.
The winning teams from the Regional Final progress to the Grand Final where they take part in a series of engineering challenges organised by the companies involved and compete to be named the best team. Past Grand Finals have been held at the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton, the University of Bristol, and the University of the West of England. The winning team receive free glider flights with the winning school awarded a voucher for £1000 of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) equipment. Second place receives £500, third place £250.
The Bristol Aeroplane Company, originally the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, was both one of the first and one of the most important British aviation companies, designing and manufacturing both airframes and aircraft engines. Notable aircraft produced by the company include the 'Boxkite', the Bristol Fighter, the Bulldog, the Blenheim, the Beaufighter, and the Britannia, and much of the preliminary work which led to Concorde was carried out by the company. In 1956 its major operations were split into Bristol Aircraft and Bristol Aero Engines. In 1959, Bristol Aircraft merged with several major British aircraft companies to form the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) and Bristol Aero Engines merged with Armstrong Siddeley to form Bristol Siddeley.
The Ansari X Prize was a space competition in which the X Prize Foundation offered a US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. It was modeled after early 20th-century aviation prizes, and aimed to spur development of low-cost spaceflight.
The Centennial Challenges are NASA space competition inducement prize contests for non-government-funded technological achievements by American teams.
XPRIZE Foundation is a non-profit organization that designs and hosts public competitions intended to encourage technological development. The XPRIZE mission is to bring about "radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity" through incentivized competition. It aims to motivate individuals, companies, and organizations to develop ideas and technologies.
The International Space Settlement Design Competition, more commonly known as "SpaceSet", "ISSDC" or "Inters", is an annual competition founded by Anita Gale, Dick Edwards, and Rob Kolstad. The competition is supported by various Aerospace, Engineering, and Education organizations, including NASA. The competition is for high school students and simulates the experience of working on an aerospace company's proposal team. The teams, known as 'companies', are asked to design a space colony to fulfill a Request for Proposal (RFP).
The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (NG-LLC) was a competition funded by NASA's Centennial Challenges program. The competition offered a series of prizes for teams that launch a vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTVL) rocket that achieved the total delta-v needed for a vehicle to move between the surface of the Moon and its orbit. The multi-level competition was conducted by the X PRIZE Foundation, with sponsorship from the Northrop Grumman Corporation who ran the ongoing competition. The prize purses were paid by NASA. It was held annually at the X PRIZE Cup, making its debut at the 2006 Wirefly X PRIZE Cup in October, 2006, until 2009 when the prize purse was awarded to Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace.
Raisbeck Aviation High School (RAHS), part of the Highline School District, is located in Tukwila, Washington. The school is an aviation- and aerospace-themed STEM school and one of the Highline School District's small schools. It is focused on preparing students for college, careers, and citizenship. The school serves about 400 students in grades 9-12 from around Puget Sound. Until 2013 it was known as Aviation High School. It is next to the Museum of Flight's Aviation Pavilion exhibit near King County International Airport.
The John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences is a multidisciplinary college within the University of North Dakota (UND) in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The school was formed in 1968. The majority of the school's fleet of over 120 aircraft is based at nearby Grand Forks International Airport and is the largest fleet of civilian flight training aircraft in North America. UND Aerospace also operates a flight training center at Phoenix–Mesa Gateway Airport in Mesa, Arizona. Today, the school has many aerospace-related programs including commercial aviation, Unmanned aircraft systems operations, air traffic control, airport management, Space Studies, Computer Science, Atmospheric Sciences, and Earth System Science & Policy. Currently, the school has over 500 faculty and 2,000 students making it the second largest of UND's degree-granting colleges. The present dean of the school is Robert Kraus.
Akaflieg is an abbreviation for Akademische Fliegergruppe, groups of aeronautical engineering students from individual German universities of technology and Technische Hochschulen, pre and postwar, who design aircraft, often gliders.
F1 in Schools is an international STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) competition for secondary school students, in which groups of 3–6 students have to design and manufacture a miniature F1 car using CAD/CAM and CAE design tools. The cars are powered by CO2 cartridges and are attached to a track by a nylon wire. They are timed from the moment they are launched to when they pass the finish line by a computer.
The American Rocketry Challenge is an annual American model rocketry competition for students in grades six to 12 sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association and the National Association of Rocketry. Co-sponsors include NASA, United States Department of Defense, the American Association of Physics Teachers and the Civil Air Patrol. Previously known as the "Team America Rocketry Challenge," the name was changed following the 2019 event.
Design Squad is an American reality competition television series targeted towards children ages 10–13. Contestants are high school students who design and build machines to compete for a $10,000 college scholarship from Intel.
The aerospace industry of the United Kingdom is the second-largest national aerospace industry in the world and the largest in Europe by turnover, with a global market share of 17% in 2019. In 2020, the industry employed 116,000 people.
The UAV Challenge - Outback Rescue, also known as the UAV Outback Challenge or UAV Challenge, is an annual competition for the development of unmanned aerial vehicles. The competition was first held in 2007 and features an open challenge for adults, and a high-school challenge. The event is aimed at promoting the civilian use of unmanned aerial vehicles and the development of low-cost systems that could be used for search and rescue missions. The event is one of the largest robotics challenges in the world and one of the highest stakes UAV challenges, with the 2018 Medical Express version of the event offering $75,000 to the winner.
Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is similar, but deals with the electronics side of aerospace engineering.
A human-powered aircraft (HPA) is an aircraft belonging to the class of vehicles known as human-powered transport.
Sun Valley High School was a four-year high school in Sun Valley, Los Angeles and was part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Sun Valley High School was home to over 600 students and 24 staff members and offers Project Lead the Way Engineering and a Media Arts/Film Production program along with Advanced Placement courses.
Eric Cecil Gordon England AFRAeS, FIMT, was a British aviator, racing driver and engineer. E.C. Gordon England was one of the early pioneers of gliding, and his glider flight in 1909 is considered to be the birth of the sport of soaring.
A CanSat is a type of sounding rocket payload used to teach space technology. It is similar to the technology used in miniaturized satellites. CanSats do not go into space, but instead are released at an altitude of about 1 kilometer, using a rocket or a balloon.
Boeing United Kingdom Limited is a subsidiary of Boeing that operates in the United Kingdom and Ireland.