Let's Catch Up, Shall We?

I haven't kept up with this blog at all! Although it is to be expected. Time is short and there are never enough hours in a day in my major.

So, I will catch you up.

Space Cowboys.
After 8 months of designing, planning, building, testing, and headaches, my rocket design team launched our full scale rocket, Leviathan in Virginia at NASA Wallops Flight Facility last May. It was quite the challenge too. We had many different obstacles to overcome throughout the process. When spring semester ended, Space Cowboys shifted into high gear. We spent many all nighters in the rocket design lab working to get our rocket ready. We wanted to have a test flight which ended in disaster! it was too windy the day of Leviathan's first launch and our rocket ended up becoming completely horizontal midflight which made the altimeters eject the drogue and the main parachutes at the same time. The teather ended up breaking apart from the lower have of the rocket which send the payload section plumitting to earth while the fins and the main 'chute came down .... without a GPS system on board. Our hearts sunk. We were unable to locate the bottom half of our rocket that day, but search parties were sent out and Leviathan was found.... 60feet in a tree. We ended up getting a bucket truck to help us get it down and found that one of our body tubes had been completely ripped IN HALF! You have to understand how insane this is, our rocket body tubes are made of kevlar, the same stuff bullet proof vests are made of! We were in shock, but we didnt have long. Wallops launch was quickly approaching. We had a week and a half to layup another body tube and fix the scientific payload, not to mention the CO2 ejection systems that we had yet to finish (The first launch, we used black powder ejection).

And some how within a week and a half we achieved in finishing Leviathan, and even painting him. He looked gorgeous. We loaded up and road tripped to VA. When we arrived we still had a few things to finish up on our rockets. We worked around the clock to finish. At the rocket fair we had at Wallops, the safety officials came to us to tell us we weren't allowed to use our key switches. Which made our hearts stop. The key switches have been apart of our design plans from the get-go. These key switches turn on our altimeters AND GPS system. We had about 24
hours to figure out what we were going to do. At first we thought we were going to have to MacGuyiver our rocket together. We even went to Wal-mart that night and bought 2 alarm clocks, plastic tubing and a remote control car. We were in for a long night. James, our chief engineer, pulled it off though, he made the keyswitch system we had into a pull system. So we had a loop outside the rocket, that a rope was tied to, and once pulled the rocket's altimeters and GPS systems would turn on. So we were green for launch.

The rail we got to use at Wallops was truly amazing. This rail some pretty huge rockets had launched from. and while our
rocket, Leviathan, was the largest rocket at the University Student Launch Initiative Level 2 Challenge, It would look tiny to any rocket Wallops launched on that rail. (Our rocket was 11ft tall, 7in in diameter, FYI) I was one of the lucky ones who was able to carry him out to the launch pad. We were decked in EFD coats, hard hats, and steel toed boots. There was so much anticipation lingering in the air. We were so nervous to see our baby go, but we knew it was going to be an amazing launch. Just wanted to get him up in the air.

Once we had taken a picture in front of Leviathan on the rail. We walked away from him. I looked back for one last look almost to say "Safe passage, Leviathan". He looked so small on that rail, too. Takes three people to carry him and he was ant sized compared to the rail. To think 8 months of sleepless nights came down to that moment. It is on of those many moments I have had the past two years where I have thought "This really is where I am meant to be." I love my major and everything about it.

Two members and myself went into the Block House where we could press the ignition button. We sat there quietly and Leviathan ignited and gave such a show. I could feel my heart beating as it passed beyond site. I kept asking the safety officer if we could leave the blockhouse, due to the cameras loosing site of the rocket. We got the "OK" to leave and me and the other two guys ran out the door and sprinted up the stairs to the roof.
Looking nervously out into the Atlantic Ocean. My heart felt like it was going to come out of my chest it was beating so hard. I know I annoyed that safety officer asking if she had heard anything every 20 secs. We got the word that our rocket had separated drogue and main! The boat was headed out to retrieve it. I felt a wave of relief as I realized that we were going to get our baby back. What a beautiful flight it was too.

There was a lot of excitement to be had at the success of our launch. We were happy that everything went smoothly. We even found out that 5 of the 6 CO2 canisters went off. Which is fantastic. (Our rocket has triple redundant systems so 3 canisters for the drogue and 3 canisters for the main)



USLI Level 2 at Wallops was truly an amazing experience, I wouldn't have traded for the world. It was amazing to see something you work for months on, come together and see it do what it was supposed to. Such an amazing flight Leviathan was. What a beautiful vessel.



If interested in watching an overview of our past year at space cowboys go here:
Space Cowboys 2010-2011

Husker.

I have been working on building my Level 1&2 certification rocket the past two and a half weeks. It has been a really cool experience. Working on the whole rocket alone, I have learned so much. I got to launch him this past Tuesday, June 14th. He had a beautiful launch and I got my NAR Level 1 certification. Which was pretty cool. I painted Husker like a Viper mkii from one of my favorite shows called Battlestar Galactica. Named after Admiral Adama's callsign "Husker". It even has Adama's viper number on the fin as well. ( I know... I'm a geek. LOL)



Classes have gone well this past semester I am taking summer classes now. I also have a really big announcement but am going to write a second blog post for that.

So, until then...

<3

"The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries." - Carl Sagan