March Update

March hasn’t been the smoothest of months, but we have lots planned for the remaining weeks as the spring semester rapidly winds down.

We drove to Argonia, KS on March 12^th for numerous test flights, but nothing especially large scale. The day before, we were at the lab for twelve hours preparing for a Spaceport America Cup test flight as well as a drone deployment test flight for the Argonia Cup. Most of us slept about four hours that night, and it was a cold start as we left at 7:00.

Once we hit the Kansas border, the sky turned overcast and the temperature dropped. At the launch site, the cloud ceiling was too low to fly, but we prepared our rockets nonetheless and waited for better weather and temperatures greater than the 29° we had in the morning. We sat in our cars for over two hours for the cloud cover to break, but at noon, we decided to scrub for the day and return home. We don’t know if the weather did get better afterwards or not, but we couldn’t have spent the rest of the day waiting to find out.

It wasn’t the outcome we were hoping for, but given how cold and miserable we all were, I think most of us were grateful to have just gone home.

Fortunately, we had another chance to fly on Wednesday, but instead of Argonia, we flew at the UAFS east of Stillwater. Not as much space or especially great launch and ignition hardware, but it did the job. We first flew the drone deployment test for the Argonia Cup which, while the drone was successful, our chute got stuck in the coupler section and tumbled to the ground without a deployment event. We aren’t sure if it was due to boost, black powder ejection, or the hard landing, but the airframe of Be Beloved buckled in two places rendering the rocket too damaged to fly again. This ruled out the chance to test our airbrake for Spaceport America.

Be Beloved

Drone Deployment Test

Not to return home after just one launch, we flew our first-ever rocket, It’s Trivial, on a metalstorm motor to 2550 feet with two cameras on board. One unfortunately went missing during flight.

We did return home after that. While not the best of flights, we learned to not skimp on the tape.

In other news, a particularly exciting development is that the OSU AIAA High-Power Rocketry Team is now sponsored by NASA. The AIAA President was speaking with the faculty advisor and explaining our fundraising efforts by working concessions, selling tshirts, and hosting a fundraising night at a local Mexican restaurant. Our faculty advisor asked how much funding we would need to compete in the upcoming Spaceport America Cup, and my best estimated figure was $5000. Less than five minutes after sending that estimate, we receive a response telling us to stop fundraising, and that we would receive the $5000 from NASA.

We met with the advisor the next day to learn more. He told us that he had been following our progress since August but remained uninvolved because many student organizations begin and die out quickly when interest wanes or things get difficult. Because of our success and drive, he deemed our program worthy of his attention and financial support. We learned that he had recently become the new chairman of the Oklahoma board that allocates NASA funding throughout the state for educational programs and organizations. He wants to use part of that funding to aid our rocketry endeavors.

Additionally, he wants us to build two rockets because in his experience with competitions, it is too frustrating to have a year’s worth of work wasted because one part of a design component fails, and there is no availability for a replacement. I got to work on a parts list, and we will be ordering a hefty number of supplies tomorrow morning.

This newfound funding changes the coming months for us. I hadn’t told anyone this, but I genuinely believed we would have to withdraw from the Spaceport America Cup because we lacked the funding for hotels, registration, hardware, and motor reloads. Not only can we afford all of this now, but we can purchase them immediately, begin building, and test far sooner than I could have ever imagined.