In the classic film The Matrix, the red pill is dangerous. It calls your name, you can't take your eyes off it. Same with the red button.

The blue one is gentle. The green one is pastoral. The black one is utilitarian.

Press the red button and the world drops out from under your feet. Reality shifts. Things explode. Immovable objects meet irresistible thrust. But eventually you yield to the intense desire and press the red button.

Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) students from Cheyenne Mountain Charter Academy and Cheyenne Mountain High School are brainiacs out for a bigger thrill than the boringly consistent state-topping CSAP scores they regularly churn out. They revel in the smell of burning ammonium perchlorate. They love neck-snapping, 200 mph, egg-scrambling ballistic trajectories. Their brains reflexively require them to push the red "immediate gratification" button again and again.

With a $10 starter kit that can fly to 800 feet above ground level, it's the cheapest hobby to start, with the highest speed- and altitude- to cost ratio of all the intellectual pursuits. It's also the safest. 2008 is NAR's 50th anniversary, and there has never been a single death by anyone following the NAR safety code in 400 million launches even though these rockets can actually achieve supersonic speeds.

But TARC isn't inexpensive and it isn't a hobby; these rockets cost between $50 and $300. The average team at finals in May will have designed and built six of them and spent $1200 to qualify. Each flight costs between $10 and $30 in propellant or single-use motors. Fortunately, the Cheyenne Mountain team has had substantial corporate support. They've discovered the reality and challenge of the world of presentations, grants and proposals. And local businesses love to have their logo on the side of a competition rocket on national television and Youtube.

On a gorgeous weekend morning, the sky is an incredible blow-your-eyeballs-out blue. Three team members, male and female, crouch intently around a launch pad with a heavy-duty rod and blast deflector, prepping a flight. Others examine the clear sky. One slathers on sunblock, one carefully calculates new altitude projections, entering revised parameters as the brilliant sun warms the air and its density changes.

Then the rocket is ready. The electronic altimeter chirps, awaiting the freedom of flight.

In the distance, you can see military transports landing at Pete field. The antennae on top of Cheyenne Mountain, and beneath it the Stargate. The chapel at the Academy stands proudly to the North. There is no breeze on your face, and the world is awaiting that red button. Time slows.

"The range is closed. We're cleared for a launch. Timers ready? Going in at ten, nine..."

At "launch" the rocket, belching a flaming ball of fire, smoke and light, streaks into the heavens. Shockingly fast, faster than a shuttle or Saturn V's thunderous liftoff. It coasts for several seconds, achieves apogee straight above our heads, stops completely, then slowly starts gliding back down tail-first. One of the team members gleefully yells "Cool, a tailslider". The parachute pops and immediately opens. "That's Deana's handiwork... she specializes in folding consistent parachutes." The rocket with its precious payload of two raw eggs floats to a landing close to the launch pad. "What's the time..."

Can't reveal the time. Nor the altitude.

Classified.

750 other TARC teams read these Hub articles.

"The Challenge is like Racer's Edge at Buttermilk. You go so fast and hard-like 70 miles per hour-that if you stand up and increase your drag coefficient, all your effort is toast", says Jacob, who has been to finals in Washington, D.C. twice in three years. "Finding the performance edge and eliminating variables is what it's all about".

"Yeah, and the opposing team secretly wants you to wipe out spectacularly," says a smiling Warren Layfield, a NAR-TARC mentor, "they want scrambled eggs."

Jacob recently told the Colorado Springs City Council he wants to be the first man to step onto the surface of Mars. This might seem farfetched to many parents of video gaming couch potatoes, but the current state of rocketry and TARC are all about supporting science, gritty competition, art, and fortitude. All about incubating the next generation of Mars-conquering rocket jocks. All about teamwork, fundraising, and the realities of cost-benefit analysis.

For the next launch, I take the controls to find out for myself what it's like. Funny, but my blood actually runs cold. Maybe it's the adrenaline, or the red button, but I've never experienced anything quite like this. The countdown seems audibly far away. My senses are heightened. As the word "launch" is shouted, I have a surging visceral sensation of power and hope as the rocket motor surges, pauses, then ignites. I can feel the pounding of the thrust through the ground and in my chest. The rocket streaks into the sky, achieves apogee, and, slightly embarrassed, I finally relax my white-knuckle death grip on the red button.

"Holy cow," I say as the parachute deploys and the tension drains out of my body. "That's not quite the same as the Estes Alpha I flew back in 1970... this is pedal-to-the-metal rocketry!"

With teens like this, the future seems bright indeed. In Colorado Springs we have an ex-NASA scientist and a retired high school science teacher serving as official TARC mentors for teams throughout Colorado, Wyoming, western Kansas, even the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. We have enthusiastic individual, corporate, small business and educational organization support, including Boeing Employees Community Fund, Colorado Aerospace Education Foundation, Brandango, Dry Cleaning Equipment, Zeal Media, Wells Fargo, and others. We have three teams at Cheyenne Mountain. We call them the Stargate, SG-1, and Atlantis teams. If you're a teen interested in space exploration as a career, or an adult who would like to provide individual support or could refer us to a business that would allow a fundraising presentation, please contact the TARC mentors through the contacts page at COSROCS.

Then find out how high that rabbit hole in the sky goes.

We'd like to offer special thanks to our newest sponsor, Harris Used Parts. They offer a large inventory of foreign and domestic used auto and truck parts. Harris has been serving the Colorado Springs area for over 90 years. Their large inventory is computerized and now available to you on the internet, allowing them to keep most parts in stock and prices low.