Status updates!

Alright, I'm going to give some updates about what's going on with our senior project.  Designs continue forward we just bought a 6 degree-of-freedom program to determine where our rocket is going to land when we launch it and it's been having problems.  We are currently talking with their technical support to get it fixed.  Hopefully it will get resolved quickly.  Also we are currently in process of getting clearance for our launch in March both from the FAA and the Black Rock Nevada park.  We just found out that we may have to get the police to close off the lake bed during the launch and recovery, at our cost! That could be a problem, we are going to ask to see if the local police there will volunteer their time to help us out.  If you know someone in the police department with connections let us know!  Also we are pleased to add a new sponsor to our project. Steve's Intermountain Service Center. Thanks for the help, we are willing to accept any donations no matter how big or small they may seem!  Let us know if you'd like to contribute. Check out www.stevesintermountain.com for more information on them. More to come on some of the demos we've been doing lately.

AIAA Presentation and results

A couple weeks ago we did a presentation for AIAA which is the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.  It went really well, thanks to everyone involved!  Victor Ruiz is the local student chapter of the AIAA and he set up the meeting for us, he is also an mechanical engineering student on the airframe team.  We are currently working with Northrop Grumman through AIAA and will be receiving a donation from them soon!  We'd like to thank everyone over there at Northrop for believing in us and hope to gain even more support so that we can finish up this exciting project. Here's a picture from the presentation:

Left to Right: Brandon Terry, Justin Cote, Victor Ruiz, Danielle Hudson, Rachelle Heiselmeyer, and Kelvin Bailey

Model Rockets

Over the summer we wanted to get an idea of the scale of the size rocket we are building, both for our own benefit as well as to help show possible donors.  My dad Kelvin E. Bailey and I were able to put one together.  Here are some pictures of the finished result. Enjoy!

My dad Kelvin Bailey with the finished product.

Side view showing the fins and with small tubes for fun *actual nozzle may vary :)

Back view

Front isometric view *nose cone is missing

Shot to emphasis the height

Rocket with moon in background

Myself (Kelvin Bailey) during initial construction

Some Pictures

I thought I'd add a few pictures of the team, to help everyone get to know at least some of them.  We have 15 of us on the team, only 7 of which are pictured in this post.  More pictures to come so you can get to know everyone. The pictures show us working out the projected size of the rocket we would need to design. Meetings on campus as well as a teleconference with Lockheed Martin.  Enjoy, more to follow!

Original URoc Team: Brandon Terry, Chase Nelson, Danielle Bowen, and Kelvin Bailey

URoc Team on campus: Victor Ruiz, Brandon Terry, Chase Nelson, Danielle Bowen, and Kelvin Bailey

Team lead teleconference with Lockheed Martin

Kelvin Bailey, Joseph Green, Jacob Warner, and Chase Nelson

Motor Update

It's exciting to note that we are nearing completion of our motor design.  Our design is in for final review with the engineers over at AeroTech and then we will have a final meeting with Lockheed Martin and AeroTech to complete our approval process.  Once that's done we are ready to start building! Keep watching for more updates!

Rocky Mountain Space Grant Consortium

We'd like to give a special thanks to our friends at the Rocky Mountain NASA Space Grant Consortium for becoming one of our sponsors! They are "committed to promoting science, technology, engineering and math among K-12 students, teachers, and the general public. We are also aimed at increasing public awareness of NASA and other space-related programs." They have also generously donated a large amount to our project.  Their donation will go a long way to helping us complete our project, however we are still looking for more sponsors so if you'd like to help us please contact us at "uroc@eng.utah.edu"! Once again a special thanks to Dr. Dwayne Westenskow and Brenda Maldonado and all the people at the Space Grant Consortium for all their help and support, we're glad to have you as part of the team!

Who We Are

Welcome to the University of Utah's URoc blog.  We'll be keeping you up to date on all the latest project information.  We are currently in the fall semester of our senior design project for the U of U.  There are 15 team members comprising 12 mechanical engineering students and 3 electrical engineering students.  We are divided into 4 subgroups including: Airframe, Avionic, Launch Tower, and Motor Design.  The tentative launch of our historic project will be around March 21, 2011 but is subject to change based on weather conditions.  We are excited to share this experience with the world, make sure to follow us here and on Facebook! Look for URoc.