Haskell Indian Nations University students Patricia Fuqua, Tlingit, of Anchorage, Alaska, left, and Bobbie Wells, North Arapaho, of Ethete, Wyo., have a laugh as they work to attach fins to the base of a 12-foot rocket in Sequoyah Hall on the Haskell campus. They are members of a class that will take the rocket, which is made of G-10 fiberglass, to the First Nations Tribal College High-Powered Rocketry Contest next weekend near Milwaukee. According to Lucas Miller, instructor of mathematics at Haskell, the rocket is expected to travel more than 9,500 feet into the air.

Haskell math instructor Lucas Miller goes over the final design plans of the rocket with his class last Tuesday. Miller designed the rocket project for students who had completed his calculus course, so they could practice its application and get a feel for what science and math careers would be like.

It’s T minus five days and counting for a group of Haskell Indian Nations University students, preparing to take a semester’s worth of work and shoot it more than 9,500 feet into the air.

“I am ready for the launch day,” said Haskell student Richard LaBrie, 24, an environmental studies major from Sacramento, Calif.

LaBrie and eight other students are putting the finishing touches on a 12-foot, 50-pound high-power rocket that’s expected to travel at nearly the speed of sound.

All of their hard work will come down to the push of a button on Saturday in Milwaukee, when the students compete in the First Nations High Power Rocketry Launch competition, hosted by the College of the Menominee Nation.

“It’s going to be hundreds of person hours, about $10,000, and it’s all going to come down to pushing the button once, and we’re going to see what happens,” mathematics instructor Lucas Miller said. “It’s kind of like a NASA mission: There’s a lot of money and a lot of time put into it, and you only get one chance.”

Miller is teaching Haskell’s first high-power rocketry course, a class he developed as sort of a reward for students completing his calculus class.

“This is an opportunity for them to apply what they learn in calculus, one, and get a feel for some of the exciting things that math and science careers hold in the future,” Miller said.

The students came up with the design and have been working long hours in a lab inside Sequoyah Hall to build the rocket, which is equipped with more than $6,000 worth of high-tech scientific instrumentation to measure temperature, barometric pressure and humidity. It also will contain two-way radios and a GPS.

“It should go a couple of miles high,” Miller said. “We won’t be able to see it, but we should be able to track it.”

The class received a Tribal Colleges and Universities Program grant from the National Science Foundation to help cover the cost of building the rocket. If the Haskell students win the competition, they could walk away with another $1,000.

Those participating in the class said the knowledge and experience they’ve gained from working on the project has been worth much more than that.

“I never thought I would build rockets,” said 19-year-old Haskell student Patricia Fuqua, a sophomore from Anchorage, Alaska, who is hoping now to pursue a degree in engineering. “I think even just having this idea and putting it together is a good accomplishment.”