"Steadfast Steadley"

I’d like to preface this post with the motivation and significance behind this weekend’s launch. When this program began in August, we sought a means to secure initial funding from the university to build momentum. As I had done for water polo, we completed an application requesting Co-Sponsorship from the OSU Student Government Association (SGA). A student on the committee, Andrew Steadley, was thrilled with our goals and ambitions, and he advocated to provide our team with the maximum amount of funding available at the time, $1500. It is thanks to him that our program had the initial funding to get off the ground and build larger rockets.

On January 20^th, 2017 Andrew suddenly passed away. His roommates found him in his apartment, cause of death unknown. This was an enormous shock to every student at OSU as he had touched so many students' lives. Our rocketry team already had a big rocket in the works, and upon hearing this news and remembering his support for our program, we decided to name our upcoming rocket Steadfast Steadley after him, honoring the faith he had in us.

Andrew’s favorite colors were blue and purple, and every student in SGA can attest to Andrew’s purple suit that he wore to SGA meetings and functions. Our team lead who handles our rocket’s paint jobs was inspired by the night sky and Andrew’s favorite colors for the paint scheme on Steadfast Steadley. He did an amazing job beginning at the bottom with a setting sun (also where the bright exhaust trail would exit the rocket’s motor), blending yellow into red and purple to blue to end with a starry black sky at the top.

Here is a video to a time-lapse of the partial assembly of Steadfast Steadley.

This is time-lapse video of the motor assembly for the flight.

For the launch of Steadfast Steadley on February 11^th, 2017 we flew the 15-pound rocket on a 54mm Aerotech K700W motor. Three seconds after motor ignition, it achieved a maximum velocity of 1,180 feet per second, or 805 miles per hour (1.05 times the speed of sound). It reached apogee at 8515 feet (1.6 miles), smashing our previous maximum altitude of 852 feet.

This is the footage of the launch as viewed from the launchpad. The force of takeoff did actually blast the GoPro backwards which worked out well as the camera continued to film the rocket's ascent.

We were unable to configure our GPS for this flight, so we had to rely on ground eyes. One member of our team could track it with binoculars, but the descending rocket disappeared behind the sloped fields. For over an hour we searched from vehicles and heading out on foot over the corn fields to no avail. A mile and a half from the launch site, I happened to spot an orange parachute with binoculars while standing in the bed of a pickup truck. Sure enough, we’d found it. No damage to the rocket, and after we connected to a laptop, we determined the maximum altitude reading from our altimeter. Having recovered Steadfast Steadley, the launch was flawless and we were thrilled to have flown our best rocket to date in memoriam of our friend, Andrew.