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Newsletter that provides an overview of what the Triton Rocket Club (TRC) accomplished during their first year on the campus of UC San Diego. TRC was created to give students hands-on experience with building rockets as well as put theory to practice.
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE GETTING STARTED: The beginning of the Triton Rocket Club CARL TEDESCO: TRC Advisor THE SOLID ROCKET: Initial plans for the solid rocket THE LAUNCH OF FRANKENSTEIN THE LIQUID ROCKET: General outline of how it will be built EXPERIMENTAL SOUNDING ROCKET COMPETITION STATIC TEST
Triton Rocket Club 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093
TRITONROCKETCLUB
The Triton Rocket Club (TRC) was founded at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in the fall
quarter of the 2011 school year by Deepak Atyam, Seeman Farah, Vicken
Bekarian, and Jay Gokhale. The founding President, Deepak Atyam, had
been inspired by the experienced gained by San Diego State University’s
rocket team and took the initiative to form such a club at UCSD as well soon
after his admittance into the university. The vision Deepak had for TRC
was for it to become a pre- professional club that aids students
interested in rocketry gain to practical and technical experience as well
as help them to attain the necessary skills and connections to get internships.
Through the collaborative efforts of the founder and a handful of engineering
students, the Triton Rocket Club became a fully and well established
organization in the span of just a few short months. The club also had
guidance from experienced advisors to help achieve its goals.
Page 2 Vol. 1
Getting Started
Pictured: Carl Tedesco with TRC members in the background
Carl Tedesco
“a pre-
professional
club that aids
students
interested in
rocketry to gain
practical and
technical
experience”
The Solid Rocket In the beginning of the club, before it was even officially established, the original idea was to build a liquid fueled
rocket. However, due to inexperience and funding it was decided unanimously that it would be best to postpone
making a liquid-fueled rocket and instead start off with a simpler solid-fueled rocket. Since the purpose of the
solid rocket was to gain more technical experience than anything else (fiberglassing, machining, etc.), it was
decided that a kit would be used instead designing the solid rocket from scratch. That way the club members
would quickly gain the technical experience of building a rocket and would be able to begin designing for the
liquid rocket. The kit used for the solid rocket was an EZI-85 and since a stronger fuel than the EZI was designed
for was being used, the body and fins of the rocket were fiberglassed. An altimeter that was designed,
programmed, and built by the electronics team was added to the rocket.
Carl Tedesco is an advisor for the club as well as the senior engineer
responsible for engineering design, fabrication, analysis, testing, reporting and
documentation for the engineering company Flometrics. Mr. Tedesco received
his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from San Diego State
University (1997) as well as his Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering
(2004). Mr. Tedesco currently acts as the advisor/mentor for the SDSU Rocket
Project, and has been doing so since 2003, in addition to now acting as advisor
for the UCSD Triton Rocket Club. Before Mr. Tedesco worked at Flometrics, he
worked as a mechanical engineer for the electronics packing industry and the
semiconductor industry, and has also taught Fluid Mechanics courses at SDSU.
Mr. Tedesco has been an enormous help to the development of the liquid and
solid rockets, both as an advisor and allowing the club members to use the
machine shop at Flometrics. – Bio from www.flometrics.com
TRITONROCKETCLUB
Page 3 Vol. 1
The Launch of
Frankenstein On February 4, 2012, the
club’s solid rocket was
christened Frankenstein (due
to its mish-mashed
appearance akin to the
creature in Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein) and launched in
Plaster City. The retention
system was fitted and finalized
and an I motor was added
onsite. While the rocket was
successfully launched and
recovered, there were some
problems that occurred. There
were complications with
reading the data because it
turned out that there were not
enough breathing holes(meant
for pressure sensing) placed
on the foam container that
encased the altimeter. The
retention system also did not
fit properly and the guide wall
was too thick and it’s bearings
too small. Despite these
complications, Frankenstein
did quite well and was an
proud achievement for such a
newly founded club. The same
success, and hopefully even
more, is expected for the
liquid-fueled rocket.
Graph of combined altitude and vertical acceleration and speed. Credit given to James Wu for making the graph and correcting the data
-400
-200
0
200
400
600
800
0
500
1000
1500
2000
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
Spe
ed
(ft
/s),
Acc
ele
rati
on
(ft
/s/s
)
Alt
itu
de
(ft
)
Time (s)
Alt (ft) Y Acc (ft/s/s) Y Speed (ft/s)
Airframe: Modified and fiberglass- reinforced Loc/Precision EZI-65 Motor: White Thunder 54mm I218, impulse 491 N·s, thrust 59 N, 2.3s burn time Rocket weight: 5.0 lbs Flight altitude: 2289 ft from ground (0.43 mi) Max velocity: 578 ft/s (394 mph, Mach 0.5) Max acceleration: 662 ft/s^2 (20.6 g)
Time to apogee: 11.6s Time of flight: 123s Average rate of descent: -19 ft/s
1 Attaching the retention system
3 Vic Bekarian holding Frankenstein
2 Seeman Farah testing out parachute
TRITONROCKETCLUB
Page 4 Vol. 1
Experimental Sounding Rocket Competition
The annual Experimental Sounding Rocket Competition, hosted by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association, will take place in Green River, Utah. The advanced category of rockets will take place during June 21-23. This year’s competition will be international and the participating universities in the advanced category are the California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, San Diego; University of Washington; and University of Waterloo (Canada). The goal of the competition is to design, construct, and launch a rocket with a minimum ten pound payload closest to 25,000 feet above ground level
(AGL). The rocket must reach a minimum of 12,500 ft AGL, but it cannot exceed 27,000 ft or it will be disqualified. The team makes the decision of whether the fuel is solid, hybrid, or liquid. Other requirements include: a technical paper describing the rocket design; a 20-
minute oral presentation on the rocket design, given at the beginning of the competition; and a safety analysis identifying potential hazards, risk assessment, and risk mitigating procedures.
The rocket consists of channeling the combustion of a liquid oxygen and alcohol
mixture through a nozzle designed building-block methods of fabrication to assemble
the whole structure. Broken down into its components, this consists of housing the
combustion reaction in a thrust chamber and sealing the engine onto a fuel injector
plate. Feeding into the plate are a series of pipes and valves regulated to control the
fuel flow rate dropping from the tanks. A sub-team of the project will design the
airframe housing the engine and fuel systems, as well as the electronics, payload, and
recovery system. Each team designs its components with integration and compatibility
in mind. The electronics acquire and read data, communicating stages to the recovery
system. Parachute and drogue deployment are crucial structural tasks that require
flawless incorporation of the two sub-assemblies.
Originally, the plan was to complete the liquid rocket and launch it at the competition,
but as the deadline got closer it became evident that the rocket would not be completed
in time. Making a liquid fueled rocket had been planned since before the club established,
but the club was unaware of this competition until a few months before it took place. The
decision to partake in the competition meant that the liquid rocket would have to be
completed within 3 months time. If successful, this would have been the shortest time
this class of liquid rocket had ever been completed in the world. The time constraint was
simply too unrealistic for the resources available and what had to be done. As such, it was
decided that the team would instead just do a static fire test at the competition. Despite
this, the amount of work that has been accomplished is still very impressive and while the
team will be unable to launch for the competition, the liquid rocket should be completed
sometime next school year.
PIcture
The Liquid Rocket
Static Test 5 Airframe of liquid rocket
4 Deepak working on the tanks
TRITONROCKETCLUB
Page 5 Vol. 1
Club Officers
Deepak Atyam President [email protected]
Seeman Farah Vice-President [email protected]
Jay Gokhale Secretary [email protected]
Vicken Bekarian Treasurer [email protected]
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