Mattix Scharf

By Chelsey St-Pierre
The Suburban

Dollard-des-Ormeaux’s own young “rocket man”, 16-year old Zander Scharf, is a world famous genius in the making. In a Suburban exclusive, Zander and his family revealed how a self-taught and passionately driven young teen can attain goals well beyond the scope of standard expectations.

Building rockets is a hobby for many, but building them well is a challenge, particularly when it comes to landings. On YouTube, hundreds of clips of home-made rockets that fly low and eventually crash and break are fun to watch and fun to create by the channel hosts. For Zander, quality, functionality and landing his rockets are serious business. Presently in third place after Blue Origin’s New Shepard, Zander is aiming for second place with Space X’s Falcon rocket in first for the most landings. In total worldwide, only five model rockets and two space rockets have successfully landed. Specializing in various types of model rockets, Zander created the first model water rocket to ever land itself worldwide.

“It all started with an experiment with baking soda and vinegar when he was 10. The moment he saw the bottle just pop up a little off the ground, that was it for him. It became a passion and he dedicated himself to his rocket projects each day from that point on,” Zander’s mother, Kim Segal, told The Suburban.

At age 15, Zander was invited to join a rocketry team made up of engineering students at Concordia University working on a real space-bound rocket. Each team member was assigned to a group overseeing a portion of the project. As Zander is used to working alone and overseeing all aspects of his projects, he did not stick to a single aspect with one group as he was unable to ignore how it would all come together. Zander participated in each group wowing engineers in training at the university level with his level of knowledge.

Zander also adds an artistic aspect to his online video clips that leave viewers in complete awe. During the solar eclipse on April 8, Zander launched one of his rockets, filming the propelled water release at the eye-level of the sun at the exact calculated moment of the total eclipse which gives viewers the impression of an explosion of water in the sky that gradually reveals the eclipse behind it.

Zander’s siblings Mattix and Aycelee Scharf say they never know exactly what he is really up to working on in his room day after day until the moment he calls them out to view his final results. “Every day is a new project, something bigger, something better. He is always engineering and building something new. The sky is the limit,” Zander’s father, Ian Scharf, said proudly. n