The Super Roc Duration Competition, held on October 19th, 2012 at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Dahlgren, Virginia, is a competition that encourages participants to develop and launch a model rocket. As a competitor, the SE Rockets team will not only participate in the competition to develop and launch a rocket, but also incorporate the Systems Engineering process.

The SE Rockets team will demonstrate the usefulness of the SE process to become competitive while using affordable and available COTS components. The team is sponsored by Melanie Lashus (lady in blue from photo), former Test & Evaluation Program Manager and the branch head for the E3 Spectrum Management Branch at NSWC Dahlgren.

Melanie is a strong advocate of the Work/Life Balance Program at NSWC Dahlgren, and wanted to field a team to investigate the competition as a potential activity both for engineers across departments to network with each other, and as an outreach opportunity to younger STEM students who may pursue a career at Dahlgren in the future.