DÆDALUS ASTRONAUTICS @

The ICARUS days....

Daedalus, before it was Daedalus, was actually a student group well known on campus back in the day as ICARUS. I like to think of ICARUS as a student rocket design group more than anything, as the only rocket ever built was back in 2001. This rocket, unorginally named ICARUS I, had a series of launches associated with it, ending with the spectacular midflight catastrophe caused by its aging composite structures. This rocket can be found in the Projects page.

After the construction of ICARUS I, the group decided to try for something more ambitious: hitting the 100km mark and becoming the first civilian space group to enter space. Over a span of several years, trade study amongst trade study were completed by several dozen student members. The final iteration called for a family of ever increasing sized sounding rockets, powered by hydrogen peroxide hybrid motors. The founding members (among them were Justin Pucci, Chris Neilly, Jimmy Young, Ethan Stump, and Devon Chevellod) had decided that the idea of using the rockets to launch small suborbital payloads to space was a profitable one. Over the next year, much time went into finding funding for such a venture. The group presented in front of venture capitalists, angel donors, and went so far as to seek professional advice from the new entrepreneurship services offered by Arizona State University.

Unfortunately, despite ICARUS' best efforts, the business plan was not able to attract the kind of interest that we all were looking for. It was simply too expensive. When you mention great plans of reaching space for an affordable price, people don't want to hear pricetags in the millions of dollars with half a decade leadtimes on returns of revenue. But that is simply how the aerospace industry works, especially if you want to hit orbit. Sure, you can launch a sounding rocket up the verrrrry tip of space for only tens of thousands of dollars, CSXT did it, but turning that into a viable business plan with a large base of customers willing to pay for suborbital research is a hard thing to do with limited funding.

However, that does not mean it can't be done with the proper amount of time, money, and patience. My favorite examples of this are the new breed of space travel entrepreneurs: SpaceX, Scaled Composite, Blue Origin, Armadillo Aerospace, & XCOR, just to name a few. I read up on their happenings religiously; hoping these companies and others will bring the private space industry to bear.

But back to the story: the wax wings of ICARUS had melted, the founding members had graduated and gone off to their respective graduate schools (among them were MIT, Georgia Tech, & U. Penn.), and a few of us were left here alone to finish up our undergrad. But not without hope. At the very end of ICARUS, a very generous donation was received from Raytheon, in response to an outreach proposal we had submitted so very long ago. In it we detailed our new hybrid rocket and the steps we needed to take to acheive such a lofty goal, as well as our educational outreach plans. While their gift was not enough for the gargantuan suborbital sounding rocket as ICARUS had planned, it was enough for a series of smaller rockets and a very respectable outreach program. So that's what we did. We changed the direction of ICARUS from a money-generating venture to a student run rocket group that performs educational outreach. Our new name was agreed upon as Daedalus Astronautics @ ASU. Those knowing the greek mythological story of Daedalus and his son Icarus will find the humor in the new name chosen...

Enter now the days of Daedalus...

I decided this was a good time to get our logistics in order, and went on a begging spree for some labspace. Agreeing to help us as a student group was of course the Mechanical & Aerospace Department. More specifically, kutos go out to Katrina Vance, Dr. Steele, and Chalysse Standifird for their invaluable and constant help with our labspace and finances, as well as Dr. Wells and Dr. Mikellides for their seemingly neverending support.

It took us a good 6 months to get everything squared away, and during that time we were tempted to change our majors to woodworking with all the custom furniture we built to accomodate our rocket building. And as far as thanking goes, no one more so than senior Daedalus member Thomas Villarreal deserves credit for building the labspace. You really don't know how much you need a tool before Thomas brings one in and shows you the benefits. That is why, to this day, Daedalus is and always will be very stocked up in the tools department. Right tool for the right job, as Thomas would preach.

Since then, we've been hard at work building rockets and associated rocket paraphernalia whilst performing our outreach activities. For info on our latest happenings, please visit our news section, updated frequently.