Aerospace Club is very happy to announce that has once again supported our efforts with a sizable donation to the club during their spring forum. Several members of the club attedended the forum to receive the check, connect with industry, and participate in unmanned systems related tours. This donation will be used to provide travel opportunities for Aerospace Club members to visit leaders in the industry. Thanks again AUVSI Cascade!
At meeting yesterday, we reached consensus on a name for our IREC rocket, and the name is now CARBONCougar! CARBONCougar is now being built, with the goal of construction being finished on the 14th. See CARBONCougar’s logo below.
Earlier today, Paul, Kevin, Katlyn, Mario, Curtis, and I traveled to Pasco, WA for Paul and Kevin’s first attempts to achieve Level 1 NAR certification. The Tri-Cities Rocketeers were gracious in letting us launch our rockets from their stands, as well as helping us navigate everything we needed to make our certification attempt possible. While both launches resulted in failure (parachutes failed to deploy), we all had a lot of fun watching others launch as well as launching our own rockets. I’m currently prepping video of our launch attempts, but here’s some photos of the event and a video of a particularly spectacular launch by Conrad of Seattle, WA to tide you over. Enjoy!
Composites work to make structural components for the rocket body continues. We have not achieved the perfection we seek yet, but are learning much in the process!
WSU Aerospace Club will be hosting a movie series covering the history of rocketry and spaceflight. These movies are a collection of essential space films that cover topics about the origins of rocketry and spaceflight, major events and disasters, and major accomplishments of the industry. We encourage anyone interested in aerospace, rocketry, or space to attend – especially if you haven’t seen the film before.
Flim I: October Sky
Date: Saturday, February 7, 2015
Time: Open at 1:30pm, Movie from 2pm-4pm
Location: ETRL M7 (Meet in Dana 51 at 1:00pm if you don't know where this is)
October Sky is the first film we will be showing in the series. This film tells a parallel story to what we as a club are trying to accomplish – it’s about a group of students working to do what others tell them isn’t possible by building rockets from scratch. They come from a small town in the middle of nowhere and through hard work and determination manage to be competitive in Science Fairs. Set in the late 1950s, October Sky gives you a view into America as the space race is hitting full swing, the movie starting with the launch of Sputnik.
Pushbullet is a great app that you can download on almost any device and get instant notifications. It can be used as a messaging service to push images, text or other media between devices; It can push notifications between devices so you see all notifications no matter where you are; You can even subscribe to your favorite channels to get notifications when new content is added. To follow WSU Aerospace Club, go to https://www.pushbullet.com/ and download the app for your favorite device, and then head over to https://www.pushbullet.com/channel?tag=wsuaero to subscribe to our channel. This channel will automatically push notifications to you based on the latest posts on the WSU Aerospace Club website.
Tomorrow, Aerospace Club leaves for AUVSI Cascade’s annual fall conference in order to meet with industry leaders right here in the northwest. This will be the third year in a row that we attend, having showcased Genii UAS the past two years at the conference. This year, not only will we be updating our friends at AUVSI on Genii, but we will be sharing information on our latest project – the 10th Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition. We will be bringing informational materials, and our first prototype rocket, the PUMA mk.I. Look forward to updates from the conference soon!
For more information on the conference, click here.
Aerospace Club just finished testing it’s first round of rocketry. While these are still a long way from the rocketry we are going to need to send 10 pounds to 10,000 feet, they’re a first step along the journey. Members learned a lot about rocketry in this test, including the necessary steps to prepare a rocket, safety training, and the important items about rocket building. We ended up launching a total of seven rockets, five of which were B–6–4 and two of which were A–8– 3. The video of Kevin Cavender’s rocket is posted below for you to watch.
Aerospace Club was a big hit at the re-naming ceremony for the (now) Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture. We had a large display showing off all of our goods from baby rockets to the 18 foot wingspan of Genii. It was a blast to share our experiences with everyone at the event, and to be able to explain what our club does.