Maintaining the illusion

After a whole week of intense competition that Keith decided to monitor from up close, the young man designated one participant after the other to come and present their build to the others.

It took another couple of days since they were so many, but eventually some rockets stood out of the ordinary. Out of the five hundred candidates left in the competition, only a tenth of that managed to build a complete rocket by the end of the alloted time. This number was a lot larger than Keith initially expected it to be, but the rules he had set for this second phase came in handy to decide the winners of this test.

In the end, about twenty-five rocket design successfully launched a few miles up the air before landing back on the planet only using their thrust. Four of them were caught cheating or breaking the rules at some point in the competition so Keith eliminated them based on this evidence, leaving twenty-one people to get through the third phase of this event.