Can your Project Bring Home the Money?

The NARCON 2017 Research and Development competition is open to any rocketeer who is performing research, or engineering new developments, in which NFPA-1122/1127 (NAR Safety Code) compliant hobby rocketry plays a primary part. The purpose of this competition is to stimulate new concepts, approaches, and ideas in advancing the state-of-the-art of hobby rocketry or in using hobby rocketry as a research tool, and to recognize the projects that do this best. Projects previously entered in an NAR-sanctioned R&D competition event or whose results have already been published in a periodical will not be accepted as an entry unless the contestant demonstrates that significant new work has been done.

Each entry must be accompanied by a written report providing at least the following information in order to be considered for a prize. This written report must be submitted in digital form (Adobe Acrobat preferred) no later than midnight on Thursday, February 16 to the NARCON Event Director Trip Barber ( ahbarber@alum.mit.edu ) so that it can be distributed to the judges for advance review.

• The objectives of the work
• The approach taken
• List of any related R & D reports previously entered in competition or published by the author with a summary of what new work has been done for the current submission
• References to previous work done on the subject by others based on a review of the 400 R&D reports catalogued and posted on the NAR website
• The equipment used
• The facilities used
• The data collected
• The results obtained
• The conclusions drawn
• Further work that would clarify or extend the results obtained

The contestant should be prepared, if called upon by the Judges, to make an oral presentation on his/her project in person between 8 PM and 10 PM on Friday, February 24 at the NARCON 2017 hotel. A computer projection system accepting Powerpoint or Adobe Acrobat files will be available for this purpose. The oral presentation shall not exceed fifteen minutes. The presentation should cover briefly the material of the written report. Judges and members of the audience may question the contestant concerning his/her project afterward for a time not to exceed ten minutes.

Cash prizes will be awarded by the Judges as follows based on their judgment concerning the quality of each project submitted.  The prizes are generously sponsored by Aurora Flight Sciences.  There are no age divisions in this competition.

R&D Prize Categories

First Place:	$500.00
Second Place:	$300.00
Third Place:	$200.00