Team America Rocketry Challenge
Project Reflection
For my passion project, I began with the passion of helping further the progress of getting the Solar Car team's solar car running. This project fits with my passion of engineering and design. The project also has helped further the progress of the solar car during the time in school that I could otherwise not use for this purpose. For the first week of this project, I began making a plan and wrote the project proposal for this project, compiled what I would do for the project and when. Then about midway through the week I realized that for the last week of the project I would be launching model rockets in Washington DC for the national competition Team America Rocketry Challenge. This change in schedule changed my outlook on my ability to continue this project in Washington DC. While on my rocketry trip, I could not access many resources and parameters of the solar car. I decided that I needed to come up with an alternate plan to substitute for the project that I could not continue. An idea struck me that I could build a prototype for a more efficient reduced friction bike dynamo to generate electricity for bike lights and a bike phone charging station. I was hoping to prototype it and hopefully sell the idea. I set off on working on researching the necessary materials for this project and writing a new project proposal for it as well. I got about halfway through composing a new project proposal and had started to order some of the materials when Ally my Humanities teacher started calling students in for short meetings with her to check in on the progress of their projects. When it came around to my meeting we discussed my change of direction in my passion. Finally, we determined that on my upcoming trip that I should not make it harder than it needed to be. What Ally made me realize is that my passion was in front of my face the whole time it was rocketry. Afterall, I was going to nationals for rocketry and had been working on rocketry in my free time and enjoyed rocketry a lot. The next day I began to just focus on getting ready for the rocketry competition.
During this project, I think that I improved upon my 21st-century skill set for the future quite a bit. I learned how to collaborate well with the peers in my group in order to make a refined finished rocket. I learned about design skills and software navigation by learning how to design rockets in the software Rocksim. Through designing these rockets I learned the complexity of digital prototyping and its usefulness. I found that prototyping designs virtually can greatly improve my ability to build projects that will work better in the long run. During my exploits in this project, I discovered opportunities and my great interest in the engineering of aerospace vehicles. I learned the vast opportunities that accompany the field of aerospace engineering. The field of the designing and construction aerospace vehicles needs a very specific skill set. Which includes cad designing in virtual programs on the computer to go through the vast number of variables that would be included in a craft. A skill set which I have learned from is my ability to do camera interviews. I found that under the added mental pressure of a camera filming and then later broadcasting what I am saying I can fumble with key pieces of information which I am to state. These include the place of an event, the date, and other key simple factors which normally would come easily and be common knowledge.
In this project, I encountered many challenges some of which are included below. In the early stages of this project, I discovered that my rocket design was unstable due to the center of mass and the center of gravity were to close together. Through this, my rocket was eliminated from running as our team's rocket to compete with. I found this to be understandable so I joined a subgroup of students within the team to work on one design which triumphed over my rocket. The next major challenge that our team was to overcome was the challenge of fine-tuning the rocket. During this time period, we found that the wooden fins would break often on the maiden flight of the rocket so to counter this recurring problem we started to 3D print the fins. The 3d printed fins we found out were much stronger than many of the other components on the rocket. There was another recurring challenge that was happening during the few launch days before we went to Washington DC. The problem was that the motors for our rocket were very inconsistent. The parachute ejection charge would go off at random times often deploying the parachute too early. The results of the ejection charge going off to early was that the cord that held the upper and lower sections of the rocket in place would be yanked by the parachute as it deployed and slowed the rocket down very rapidly. When it slowed the rocket down rapidly this, in turn, would either rip the cord out or the cord would rip down the side of the body tube. We overcame this challenge by ordering rocket motors that worked properly. The final challenge that the team faced was on the final launch in Washington DC. The rocket when leaving the launch pad turned sharply to the side causing much of the necessary force that would otherwise propel the rocket upwards was directed horizontally. This, in turn, caused our rocket to lose altitude so causing the rocket not to reach 800 feet exactly. We will be looking into systems and refinements for next year to prevent this unfortunate malfunction from happening in the future.
During this project, I think that I improved upon my 21st-century skill set for the future quite a bit. I learned how to collaborate well with the peers in my group in order to make a refined finished rocket. I learned about design skills and software navigation by learning how to design rockets in the software Rocksim. Through designing these rockets I learned the complexity of digital prototyping and its usefulness. I found that prototyping designs virtually can greatly improve my ability to build projects that will work better in the long run. During my exploits in this project, I discovered opportunities and my great interest in the engineering of aerospace vehicles. I learned the vast opportunities that accompany the field of aerospace engineering. The field of the designing and construction aerospace vehicles needs a very specific skill set. Which includes cad designing in virtual programs on the computer to go through the vast number of variables that would be included in a craft. A skill set which I have learned from is my ability to do camera interviews. I found that under the added mental pressure of a camera filming and then later broadcasting what I am saying I can fumble with key pieces of information which I am to state. These include the place of an event, the date, and other key simple factors which normally would come easily and be common knowledge.
In this project, I encountered many challenges some of which are included below. In the early stages of this project, I discovered that my rocket design was unstable due to the center of mass and the center of gravity were to close together. Through this, my rocket was eliminated from running as our team's rocket to compete with. I found this to be understandable so I joined a subgroup of students within the team to work on one design which triumphed over my rocket. The next major challenge that our team was to overcome was the challenge of fine-tuning the rocket. During this time period, we found that the wooden fins would break often on the maiden flight of the rocket so to counter this recurring problem we started to 3D print the fins. The 3d printed fins we found out were much stronger than many of the other components on the rocket. There was another recurring challenge that was happening during the few launch days before we went to Washington DC. The problem was that the motors for our rocket were very inconsistent. The parachute ejection charge would go off at random times often deploying the parachute too early. The results of the ejection charge going off to early was that the cord that held the upper and lower sections of the rocket in place would be yanked by the parachute as it deployed and slowed the rocket down very rapidly. When it slowed the rocket down rapidly this, in turn, would either rip the cord out or the cord would rip down the side of the body tube. We overcame this challenge by ordering rocket motors that worked properly. The final challenge that the team faced was on the final launch in Washington DC. The rocket when leaving the launch pad turned sharply to the side causing much of the necessary force that would otherwise propel the rocket upwards was directed horizontally. This, in turn, caused our rocket to lose altitude so causing the rocket not to reach 800 feet exactly. We will be looking into systems and refinements for next year to prevent this unfortunate malfunction from happening in the future.