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| Broadcast
1386 (Special Edition) |  Listen to the show! | | Aired on June 29th, 2010 | | Guests: John Culverhouse, Dr. Paul Mueller |
| Guests: Dr. Paul Mueller, John Culverhouse. Topics: Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA) 2010 competition, student rocket clubs and launches. We welcomed back Dr. Paul Mueller, Chief Engineer for ESRA to update us on this year's college student competition for ESRA. John Culverhouse of the winning team from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (E-R) joined us to talk about his team's entry and rocket clubs in general. For more information, please visit the ESRA website at www.soundingrocket.org. In our first segment, Dr. Mueller provided us with a summary of this year's competition which was held June 16-18 at Green River, Utah. Teams had to launch a 10 lb payload to 10,000 feet, recover the payload and the rocket, make a presentation and provide a conference type paper on their rocket project. This year they had four teams with about 50 students in total. As you will hear, two teams made it to an altitude higher than 10,000 feet, one team reached 8,840 feet and the other reached 7,900 feet. A team actually looses points if they go higher than the stated altitude objective due to the FAA waiver that the competition obtained. We also talked about student and college competitions in general, as well as rocket clubs. John Culverhouse described the E-R winning entry and then based on listener questions, we took a look at the team costs for building, developing, and participating in the competition. Toward the end of this segment, Paul talked about the advance division of the contest to launch to 25,000 feet. In the second segment, Paul talked about the workshops that they are developing for the teams in association with Utah State regarding hybrid rocket motor development. Later in the segment, ITAR came up as there might be foreign teams wanting to enter the competition including some from Canada. In the context of ITAR, guidance was discussed with roll control and also pitch and yaw. Listen carefully to what Dr. Mueller had to say about this and what he has to do to comply with ITAR rules. Later in this segment, I asked John about the E-R students and their thoughts on Obama space since they are located in the heart of the Space Coast in Florida. He told us the students were upset that there would be no human spaceflight and in fact have signed a petition about this which they sent to every member of Congress. Listen to what John had to say about the student reaction to the FY 11 space budget and policy proposal. Paul brought up an interesting unintended consequence that as a professor he is aware of in that the transition to commercial and low cost space access may ultimately imply less jobs, not more jobs. A major way of achieving low cost is through using less labor. He said this may ultimately impact those seeking aerospace engineering careers as the number of jobs in the field could be reduced. Listen to the complete discussion on this subject. In our last segment, John talked about the E-R senior project to launch ICARUS 3 to space. He mentioned their need for a launch site and said that when ICARUS 1 was launched out of Wallops, the cost for tracking and related services was about $200,000 for the rocket which went to 37.5 miles in altitude. In the latter part of this segment, Paul summarized this year's event at Green River and then we responded to a listener question about the quality of college faculty advisors for rocket teams. If you have a question for Dr. Paul Mueller, he can be reached at paul.mueller.iii@gmail.com or through the ESRA website. John Culverhouse can be reached at jchouse90@gmail.com. |
| About our guests... |
John Culverhouse
John Culverhouse is an aerospace engineering major at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. I just completed my second year there and will be entering my third year as a junior in the fall. I have been working on rockets through the rocket club on campus called ERFSEDS or Embry Riddle Future Space Explorers and Developers Society. I am now currently the treasure for the club. The club itself designs and builds high power rockets not only as a hobby but to learn everything we can from them. We have worked on several rockets including the Pathfinder rocket. We have competed in a hybrid competition the past several years, with great success. We are currently in the design work of several major rockets that hopefully will be able to fly at next years IREC. The first is a rocket called Artemis, which I have worked on this past year and will continue to work on next year. We are also working on the next pathfinder III, which could launch again at IREC. There is also been talk of reviving one of our past attempts at a rocket called Vortex. I will be working again on both of these projects. In the past year the club has been working to design and manufacture an all composite motor casing as well as making our own rocket propellant. I am currently working on the propellant side of things. As for Pathfinder II that launched in the IREC competition, I worked on several aspects of the rocket, but most of my work was with the recovery system. As a club an individual we continue to learn from our success and failures and will continue designing, building, and flying high power rockets.
Dr. Paul Mueller
Dr. Paul Mueller is the Chief Engineer for the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association, the organizer of this event. He holds his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Utah State University. He was an engineer on the Space Shuttle program and has 95 hours flying backseat in F-16s. He is an adjunct assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering at Utah State, and has been the advisor to their hybrid rocket project for the past ten years.
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