By Ari Bloomekatz
Enquirer staff writer

Greg Workman, 23, a first-year master's student in aerospace engineering, checks the level of the 20-foot Pathfinder rocket that is to be launched Friday in Virginia from a NASA base. Provided

A rocket built from scratch by students at the University of Cincinnati is to be launched from a NASA base in Virginia on Friday.

The eight-inch diameter, 20-foot-long rocket named Pathfinder is designed to soar 30,000 feet into the air at a top speed of 1,400 mph, deploy a parachute from its nose cone and plunge into the Atlantic Ocean.

Though the rocket's flight will be short - just a few minutes - the launch is the conclusion of nearly two years of design and construction.

"I've learned a lot," said 20-year-old Justin Templeton, who has been working on the project since he was a freshman at UC. "I feel a sense of relief now that I know it's finally gonna launch."

NASA has been launching student projects since the early 1990s as part of educational outreach programs designed to interest youth in the aerospace industry.

Usually, students attach electrical instruments for scientific research to already-built NASA rockets, but Friday's launch is one of a handful of recent projects where students built the entire thing. Instead of including experiments on board their rocket, the UC students said their lessons came from hands-on work building it.

"We wanted to launch the entire vehicle ourselves. Not just some electronics we stuck in (another rocket)," said 24 year-old Roger Rovekamp, a recent UC graduate and one of the students who worked on the project.

Rovekamp, Greg Workman, and Justin Fisher first thought of the idea as part of their senior design project at the UC College of Engineering.

After NASA and the university accepted their proposal, the students realized they did not have adequate facilities to build the rocket's engine, and they split the project with students in Wyoming.

Some high school students worked with nearly 30 from Casper College to build the motor in Wyoming.

About 15 college students built the body in Cincinnati.

The students built almost all of the rocket from scratch, excluding the nose cone, and were guided with help from the university and from NASA officials.

"Anybody that is really interested in doing something original, we try and help them out," said Altan Ferendeci, associate head of the UC electrical engineering program. Students at UC had never embarked on such a large rocket-building project, he added.

Ferendeci said he worked with the students to build a device that transmits video from the rocket's flight to computers on the ground.

The rocket's body cost about $10,000 to build, but many of the parts were donated, Rovekamp said. The motor likely cost $5,000 to construct, he added.

The teams from Cincinnati and Wyoming met at the Wallops Flight Facility off the coast of Virginia Monday for final assembly of the rocket.

The launch was originally scheduled for this afternoon, but scheduling conflicts postponed blastoff to between 5:45 and 8 a.m. on Friday. A live Webcast of the launch can be accessed at www.wff.nasa.gov/webcast.

The students warn that a number of things could go wrong with the launch, but they are hoping the rocket reaches an altitude of at least 20,000 feet. They want to recover it for reuse.

After the rocket is recovered from the ocean, the students said they will give it back to the university for future students to use.

"Just the fact that we got it to work is exciting enough for me," Workman said.

"And if it doesn't break, that means I'm a somewhat competent engineer."

E-mail abloomekatz@enquirer.com