Third year rocket project blasts off

Six enterprising Engineering students are tackling a year-long rocket project to help launch them into exciting careers when they graduate.

Marcel van Workum, Lauren Hucker, Tré Kani, Chelsea Miller, Harrison Jones and Jamie Sanson are building a small-scale rocket to fly over the Wairarapa region for ENGR301, a project management paper.

“The rocket project piqued our interest because it was a new idea”, says Marcel. “And how many people can say they’ve built a rocket from scratch?”

Often rockets will tip over after they are launched. The team wants to find a way to stabilise the rocket and keep it travelling straight, making sure that all of its energy is used to get it flying as high as possible.

“Larger rockets are usually stabilised, but if we can get it going well on a small scale it could be popular with amateur rocket enthusiasts”, says Marcel. “Building something that works well without NASA’s budget will be a cool challenge.”

They aim to slowly increase the performance of the rocket by using larger and larger motors, under the watchful eye of their mentor, Victoria’s Andre Geldenhuis, who has experience with avionics. Holly Ade-Simpson, a fourth-year student, is also providing guidance to keep the team on track.

But group work can be challenging – especially as the students are pursuing different majors under the Engineering degree – so they need to make decisions democratically, split the workload, and play to their strengths.

“The advantage of combining multiple majors into a single project is that you get a large pool of technical knowledge to work with”, says Marcel. “Even within the disciplines, everyone has their own speciality. With such a diverse group, when we encounter a problem, someone always knows how to fix it.”

The team has until the end of the year to complete the project, which will likely be improved by next year’s class. At the moment the students are designing a trial rocket, with test flights and simulations on the horizon. There are also health and safety considerations to comply with.

“There is a long list of things that could go wrong, so we created a risk register to minimise the chances of that happening”, says Marcel. “We’ve learnt a lot about legally launching a rocket - and also specific technical knowledge relating to the project. We want to end up with a stabilised, fully-functional rocket that can transmit data via radio communications”.

The students have varied ambitions for the future, from pursuing rocketry and building high performance cars and aeroplanes, to working for one of the large aerospace companies in Europe and for NASA in Artificial Intelligence and communications.

“This project shows that we can work together as a team, which is an essential part of being an engineer”, says Marcel. “It also shows off our technical know-how to employers.”

It’s clear the rocket project will get these students off the ground: watch this space as they take flight!