Roeper Student Emma Kristal Wins Spot on the U.S. Spacemodeling Team for her Second Consecutive World Championships
By: Mark Winter
BIRMINGHAM, Mich., October 20, 2011 – Emma Kristal, a tenth-grade student at The Roeper School, has recently qualified as a member of the 2012 U.S. Spacemodeling Team for her second consecutive World Spacemodeling Championship competition. The 2012 World Spacemodeling Championship will be held next September in Liptovsky Mikulas, Slovakia.
The World Spacemodeling Championship is organized under the auspices of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), which is the governing body for all aspects of international aviation sports, including spacemodeling and aeromodeling. The World Spacemodeling Championships are held every two years, the most recent being in Serbia in August 2010, in which Kristal previously competed. The Spacemodeling Championships are run very much like the Olympics with an opening ceremony where teams march in by country in their uniforms carrying their national flag. The event lasts a week, and each day’s competition ends with a medal ceremony, which includes Olympic-style medal stands and raising the home country flags of the winners, while the national anthem of the gold medalist is played.
Kristal, a Birmingham, Mich. resident, qualified to be a member of the 2012 U.S. Spacemodeling Team this past August in Lebanon, Ohio. At that competition, she flew a number of events and earned her way onto the team once more, this time in the events of Altitude and Scale Modeling. She is extremely proud to again be representing her country as a member of the U.S. team.
At the 2012 World Spacemodeling Championship, Kristal will be flying updated versions of her altitude models and will spend the next year building an incredibly detailed, accurately scaled, flying model of the Mercury Little Joe 1, which flew in 1961. The Little Joe was used to test the escape system for America’s first astronauts and is a favorite of rocketeers because it looks so unusual. Kristal’s model will fly with six rocket motors in two stages. She will build test models first and progress up to her final version. Her two teammates on the Scale team will also be building the same model. Kristal recently attended a team practice and international competition held outside Washington, D.C. in The Plains, Virginia.
““Emma’s knowledge of rocketry and skills in rocket building are very impressive and allowed Emma to be an asset to her classmates during our coverage of that material,” Kristal’s Science Teacher at the Roeper School Wendy Mayer said.
Kristal has been flying rockets since she was six-years old and has been participating in U.S. model rocketry competitions since she was 10. She is a member of the National Association of Rocketry and has won local, regional and national events. At 15, she currently holds two United States model rocketry records.
Click here to view and download a photo of Emma Kristal
Founded in 1941, The Roeper School is a uniquely personalized, coeducational school for gifted and talented children in preschool through grade 12 from over 60 communities in southeast Michigan. With campuses in Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Roeper was conceived on founding principles that recognize the power of education, choice and self-expression, and the transformative impact these principles have on young minds. For more information, please visit www.roeper.org.
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