Rocket Man

In which I get to hang out with some undergrad missileers...

A couple members of the Eagle Aerospace team at school asked if I'd like to come along to watch them launch one of their rockets last Sunday. How could I say no?  This student-built rocket went to 11,317 feet and reached a speed of 0.91 mach. It carried a tiny video camera which captured some neat footage. It landed just under a mile away (it's chute was too big for the weight) so it took a while to find it (even with a GPS signal).

The ABS plastic fins were made in a 3D printer. By programming the fins to be printed from corner to corner in the 10x10x10 inch printer they could be made about 14 inches long. The designer used all but 1/100th of an inch of the printer capacity. They built 0.5 degrees of cant into the fin design so the rocket would spin for gyroscopic stability. The adult rocket guys at the launch site were initially skeptical of their strength but they worked fine so the old timers went away impressed. The instrumentation also included two barometric altimeters and a GPS location transmitter. The motor was commercial unit three inches in diameter and about a foot and a half long.

There's a 48,000 foot FAA waiver for the TRAPHX Eagle Eye launch site, one of the highest in the country. ERAU is one of four universities competing to be the first student team to reach space 100km/63 miles. The next Eagle Aerospace launch will be a 100,000 foot test.

Here's the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji170vVCpUo

We had a nice morning in the desert outside Aguila, Arizona (about two hours from school). Then we drank a lot of iced tea at lunch.

Yes, I love my job...