Teenagers to represent UK at rocket championships

Wilfred, Ted and Charlie (l-r) with the rockets they designed and built

Three teenagers will represent Team GB at this year's World Spacemodeling Championships (WSC) in the USA.

Wilfred, 14, Ted, 14, and Charlie, 17, from Essex, design and build their own rockets and launch them during competitions.

At the UK National Rocketry Competition they came away with bronze and silver medals having competed against experienced adults.

In the WSC, held in Austin, Texas, at the end of June, they will compete against other rocket scientists from around the world in several categories.

Ted has been designing and constructing rockets since he was eight years old

Ted, from Southend-on-Sea, has been making rockets in his spare time since he was in primary school.

At eight years old, he was launching his creations from his local club The East Anglian Rocketry Society (EARS).

Once at secondary school, he set up an extra-curricular rocketry club inspiring other young enthusiasts.

"I find rocketry fascinating," he said.

"The thrill of launching, as well as building, even though it lasts only a few seconds."

His school team made it into the national finals of the UK Youth Rocketry Challenge.

Wilfred, 15, enjoys the different engineering skills involved in making rockets

Wilfred, from Rayleigh, started building rockets aged 12 and was introduced to EARS by a family friend.

"I've always been interested in space flight and I just thought it was amazing that you can enjoy a scaled-down version of it," he said.

He achieved third place in the UK competition and said he is now "incredibly excited" to be competing in Texas.

"It's an incredibly big deal because we're representing the country with this amazing thing that we're doing."

Charlie finds the overall experience of competing in rocketry "thrilling"

Charlie is currently studying A-Levels in Maths, Physics and Engineering in Southend-on-Sea.

He hopes to go to university to study aerospace engineering, aiming for a future career in the field of spaceflight.

"The challenge is in the design," he said.

"We are dealing with the same technology that's going to put humans of Mars, which is just unbelievable."

He added one of the things he has learnt from his experience building rockets is to "springboard off failure", rather that feeling defeated from it.

"When you see these things launch in the air and quite literally crash and burn, that's months of your time that's just burnt before your eyes.

"But I think when you've realised: 'Wow, that's a design aspect we can improve on,' you start to see failure in a bit of a different light."

"The engineering that goes into it, it's very extensive," says Charlie