DÆDALUS ASTRONAUTICS @

02/11/09 - Raytheon tour, General notes, FURI, ASM International Conference

Last semester was just too busy. We had an influx of students to our group (now sitting over 30) and we are having some serious growing pains. We tried to split up into smaller, more manageable groups of students all dedicated to working on one project at a time. It didn't work out too well. Too many "team leads" and not enough people consistently showing up to one of the dozens of work meetings going on at any time throughout the week. We've changed our format back to the old way: big work meetings with people working on a variety of projects. It's a little crowded, but certainly more productive. Best yet: problems that arise are quickly quelled and new students have more senior personnel to ask questions. From now on we'll be in the labspace (RSS 4 Hangar) on MWF from noon to 2pm.

A quick recap of all that is going on:

• The NASA USLI competition is still on-going. Our rocket, VCM, is quickly being assembled. The PDR and CDR have been submitted and are uploaded on our website. Though this is a much simpler rocket than people might expect us to build, the group designing and building the rocket has a large percentage of new members. Our next step is the flight test at Estrella Mountain.
• We received a nice sponsorship from Orbital Sciences. This will likely feed directly into the NASA USLI competition.
• The Ira A. Fulton school of Engineering has also answered our request for more funding for the NASA USLI competition. Specifically the funding is going towards travel to Huntsville.
• We are continuing work on our two Freescale projects: the flight computer and the update roll control system. Both are being assembled in the labspace and hopefully some big pictures will soon follow.
• A new large vertical test stand has been designed and built by Jason Haubold with the help of new Daedalus member Weston Hanoka. The design is very modular and will accomodate our testing of new solid propellant motors (big ones!) and hybrid motors. The old test stand just wouldn't cut it. I think the only thing they are waiting on is the new donut load cell: piping from the hybrid plumbing system and the pressure transducer will fit through there and not cause any interference with the load cell.
• Work on our FURI projects (see below) is continuing and we are submitting abstracts to the AIAA regional student conference this April.
• We are now iterating on designs for the ESRA Intercollegiate Rocket Competition this summer. Much to our delight they are adding an advance category: 10lbs to 25,000 feet in addition to the basic category which will remain 10lbs to 10,000 feet. They are also changing the points system around to better accomodate our type of group. More points are awarded to student designed and built components, including propulsion.

Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative (FURI)

Much to my amazement, we were granted three (3) FURI projects with myself acting as the advisor. I can't think of a better way to get high quality work out of our students than paying them for 10 hours of work a week plus giving them a healthy budget for their individual projects. FURI projects are normally reserved for students that want to work with professors in a specific area, so this is a special treat. FURI students are required to present at the FURI symposium, but we are going much further than that. Each Daedalus member that participates in FURI is also traveling to the AIAA Region VI Student Conference to present their work:

Daedalus senior member and Project Director Jacob Dennis was granted a FURI project to start his research into hybrid motors. Our nitrous equipment has been sitting around for too long anyways... Specifically, the goal is to develop a flight ready hybrid capable of accepting different injectors and nozzle assemblies. The raw materials are ordered and our good friends at the student machine shop will soon be helping Jacob machine his parts.

Daedalus senior member Steven Shark is starting his FURI project by investigating aerospike nozzles. This project will be used in conjunction with Jacob Dennis' hybrid motor to make a direct comparison between conventional nozzles and the new aerospike nozzle. For those who do not know what an aerospike nozzle is, I suggest reading up on it a bit. It's a good technology that we hope will become more popular in the coming years of spaceflight. Our goal is to eventually flight test the system but for now Shark is working at ludicrous speed to get the thing built.

Lastly, Brad Goodman, a new member to Daedalus, is building a Crawford Strand burner for his FURI project. The purpose of the strand burner is to quickly test new propellant ingrediants without having to do small or full scale testing. It does so by burning small strips of propellent in a pressurised vessel. By changing the pressure (to mimic the stagnation pressure inside of a real motor) and measuring the regression rate, the emperical constants that dictate the burning rate can be found easily and quickly. Brad has put a LOT of time into this, and it should be up and running soon.

Raytheon Stewardship Visit on 02/05/09

In early February we traveled down to Tucson to visit our title sponsor: Raytheon. The purpose of the trip was a "stewardship visit" where we give them an overall presentation of what we've been doing. It's a long presentation that I may or may not upload to this site. We presented in front of their Engineering Leadership Team and they all seemed very excited about our work and outreach programs. I dearly hope that they will want to continue our successful collaboration in some form or another in the future.

Nearly twenty of our members were also given a tour of their facilities which were very impressive. There is much more to tour than can be seen in a single visit and I bet there are many more labs that we simply don't have access to. Of our 30+ members, five (5) are going to be interning there this coming summer. This includes myself, Jacob Dennis, Steven Shark, Kelly Mahon, and Brad Goodman. Raytheon is still doing some recruiting so that number may grow. Regardless, we are all VERY excited to be working there this summer!

AIAA ASM International Student Conference

Last year, Daedalus won first place at the AIAA Region VI Student Conference for their work relating to DARTS. I also won in the graduate category for my graduate research into pulsed inductive thrusters (a type of electric propulsion with some very neat operating characterisitics). As such, we were both invited to represent Region VI and present at the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting (ASM) International Student Conference in Orlando, Florida at the beginning of January 2009.

The conference rules dictate that the same paper that was presented to the regional conference would be judged at the international level. Also the presentation that you gave must remain the same (though the formatting could change). Of course, at the time of the regional conference the rocket had not even launched yet. Even so, you can add slides to the end of the presentation (that are not judged) about work done since April 2008. Daedalus members used this opportunity to wow the judges with our dual-staging rocket launching.

Though Daedalus did not win first place in the team category (there is no second place at the ASM International Conference), I would say they came very close. However I did manage to take first in the graduate category, which was very exciting for me. There was a lot of stiff competition out there, from other countries as well as around the country. Many thanks are in order to my past research advisor: Dr. Pavlos Mikellides and Daedalus for letting me hone my "soft skills". The official press release is here. The MAE press release is here.

As I mentioned above, we have three FURI projects that will be presented at this year's regional conference: two in the undergraduate category and one in team. And though I can't present again (I'm now a PhD student which means I'm disqualified from entering), I am acting as the advisor for the members. Hopefully at least one of the presentations will be sent off to the AIAA ASM International Student Conference again next year!

Three (3) Daedalus January Rocket Outreach Events

Daedalus participated in three separate rocket outreach events in January.

(1) Navajo Elementary Rocket Outreach Program included 79 very creative children from Navajo Elementary in Scottsdale. This is a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) focused school that works very closely with the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering to bring new and exciting programs to their students. I will post pictures of the program very soon on the outreach page, but for now I think a video is in order. This rocket was six (6) feet long and heavy for a model rocket. I've shot off hundreds of these custom model rockets and frankly I did not think even a "c" motor would get it in the air.

• Navajo Elementary outreach rocket in flight

(2) We also appeared at Night Under the Stars at Mohave Middle school. This was your run of the mill rocket show&tell during an astronomy night. This happens to be the middle school that Navajo (see above) feeds into. I get the feeling we'll be working with them as well in the future. Pictures up soon! Edit: link now up.

(3) Lastly, Daedalus was asked to come up with a quick and simple outreach event for the 2009 Engineering Expo that was held on campus in front of Old Main. Our response was a water bottle rocket launcher. Old Main is now littered with water bottles that got stuck in regular trees, palms trees, and one on top of the building in plain site.

That does it for now. We have many competitions, conferences, and activities this semester that will surely keep our Daedalus members off the streets for quite some time...

~ James Kendall Villarreal; Project Director