Saturday, 14 Mississippi State University students will launch their rocket in Huntsville, Ala., hoping to win a nationwide university competition.
Dr. Koenig, the rocket team’s faculty adviser, said the University Student Launch Initiative is a competition hosted by NASA across the United States designed to duplicate the procedure NASA uses in their own programs.
He said this will be MSU’s fourth year in the program. They will compete with 22 other universities from across the nation.
Koenig said the team is looking to improve upon previous years’ rankings, hoping to beat their third place ranking last year and their second place ranking the first year.
Koenig said the rocket team consists of students from varying majors and classifications. From freshmen to seniors, the team is glad to accept students willing to participate and willing to put in extra time toward the project. While the group consists of mostly aerospace majors, there are also students majoring in chemical engineering, electrical engineering and political science on the team.
The team looks for people with what might be considered an unusual set of skills. Koenig said one such skill looked for when selecting team members is experience working with fiberglass, a skill one does not automatically associate with model rocketry.
Christa Finley, the team’s Chief Engineer, says depending on what portion of the project they are working on, the team can stay extremely busy. They usually work on the project a few hours a week, but up to eight hours a day when they are initially designing or building the rocket.
This will be Finley’s third year in the program. Being chief engineer has allowed her to expand her leadership skills as she manages sub-team leaders, making sure each part of the project has been delegated to part of the team.
“One of the most valuable things is the hands-on experience,” said Finley.
She said the project gives students the opportunity to use what they learn in the classroom first hand.
Nathan Lewis said this is his fourth year on the team
“[It is] a great way to apply what we do in the class room,” he said.
As the project manager, Lewis said he has to approach the project from a business perspective instead of engineering. He has become what is essentially the project’s liaison to the various organizations that must be contacted in order for a test flight to occur. Before flying, the team must get permission from both the FAA and the Columbus Air Force base to make sure the two groups are aware of the flight. Lewis also has to stay in contact with those in charge of MSU’s dairy farm, as that is the launch site of the team’s practice launches.
Finley said all of the organizing and building could not take place if the team had not been selected to participate. A large portion of space exploration is scientific experimentation while in space, and the competition is focused around this idea.
Each team is required to submit a proposal outlining what they play to research on their flight. The team could not begin the project until after the approval process in August. The team is judged on design before launch, how accurately the rocket obtains the required height of 1 mile, and the uniqueness of the team’s scientific payload.
Lewis said this year our team’s scientific payload, the name for the research aboard the rocket, is a “Bluff Body in Tandem,” essentially a retractable plate that replaces the nose of the rocket in order to study the effects of a retractable nose on drag, with the hopes of helping rocket efficiency.