Stephen Hall

A division of Daedalus Astronautics club participated in the CURT Maximum Altitude Competition, striving to reach 30,000 ft with a level K motor and maintaining a thrust to weight ration of 5:1. Our design consisted of a single stage, minimum diameter rocket which used a Cesaroni K300 motor. Rocksim analysis estimated reaching an altitude of 27,000 ft, breaking any record currently held within the club. However, due to an unfortunate failure in the motor casing retainer, the motor launched up through the rocket, blowing out the top of the nose cone and destroying the rocket. This failure and project as a whole still proved to be immensely educational, showing what Daedalus is capable of achieving. 

As a freshman entering the Daedalus Astronautics club, you are divided into two separate drag race teams. Each team is required to design and build a rocket from scratch, while being able to justify the design and explain the basic components of the rocket. The overall goal of this competition is to see which rockets can reach an altitude of 6,000 ft in the shortest amount of time. As a member of this team, I learned a lot of the basic components of the rocket as well as applied my knowledge and created one in the lab. For example, we spent several weeks learning things about the center of gravity, center of pressure, thrust to weight ratios, etc. The rocket launch was a success and landed safely, even though it was a few seconds shy of winning the competition.

These few personal projects are built as gifts or just as fun, educational projects I have completed. This is may way of doing more than what is expected from my class work and has taught me unique things that can't be shown in a class room environment. These projects range from laser engraving personalized gifts to coding websites and even developing a smart mirror.