Most rocket projects come about as the result of careful planning, months of construction, a careful paint job, and a solid prep job, leading ultimately to a successful flight. Well, we got one out of four, at least.

Del Carbon started, as our fearless leader Ian Whittinghill said offhand two years ago, as a "quick side project to show we know our stuff." This was August 2005, and the Rocket Propulsion Lab at the University of Southern California was brand-spankin'-new. We were a motley crew of undergraduates going for degrees in engineering, and we were excited to get started applying our knowledge. We figured it would be good to show the school we could at least fly something, and what easier project could there be than a 6-inch diameter, 12-foot long, all-carbon composite N-powered rocket? All we had to do was build our tooling, design an N motor, and build the rocket itself. Ian was a motor guy, I was a rocket guy, and we had a bunch of people willing to help us out. This was gonna be easy. Fast forward eight months. We had turned into the aluminum lab, building a 12-foot long, 18-inch wide metal oven from scratch, designed to cure our prepreg carbon fiber parts. We had painstakingly hand-polished a six inch by thirty inch ogive aluminum nose cone plug. We had trued and smoothed a six inch by twelve foot aluminum mandrel for our airframes. We had a launch date scheduled for mid-May. It was April. And we had neither a rocket nor a motor. Fantastic.

The basic design of Del Carbon is familiar to anybody who has built a large high power rocket. Ian and I sketched out the original plans back in September in my dorm room, using my trusty copy of Rocksim 7. We elected for a single piece airframe topped with a nose cone and finished out at the aft end with four fins and a nice boattail to help with base drag. Every detail of the airframe was planned, from ring and bulkhead placement to exact dimensions for the Nomex-honeycomb fins. The thing that sets Del Carbon apart from the usual high power rocket is its construction: as a test for later rocket vehicles, we elected to build the entire thing out of carbon fiber. This would end up making the vehicle tremendously strong and lightweight, tipping the scales once completed at 18 pounds dry. Not bad for a 6-inch x 12-foot rocket. The issue with our construction methodology of choice was the amount of work it required. First, we had to build the afore-mentioned massive oven to cure the prepreg carbon fiber from which we built the airframe and fins. Then we had to carefully prepare tools to form the actual parts themselves. These processes, combined with the usual homework, classes, and jobs of college life, ended up delaying construction of the rocket until April. The year ended in May, and we wanted to prove we could fly something in the first year of the program.

So there we were, two weeks into April, laying up our first 6-inch tube on the mandrel. We cooked it in the oven and successfully demolded it the third week. We had laid up a boat tail earlier in the year as a demo part, so we elected to use that as the flight piece. Now all we needed were four fins, a motor tube, centering rings, three bulkheads, and a motor. And, of course, we had to glue it all together, too. Push ahead two more weeks. Finals are now drawing to a close, and we're still missing two critical items: a rocket, and a motor. I quickly solved the motor problem, at least for the first flight, by locating a 76mm 4-grain experimental L motor for a test flight. This would give us a roughly 7:1 thrust-to-weight ratio off the pad and drive the rocket to about 7500 feet, so, figuring this was better than no flight, we elected to use it. Our launch was scheduled for May 20th and it was currently May 14th. At least classes were over so we could devote more time to the rocket. The next week was a blur, with our precious oven fired up constantly - first curing the bulkheads, then the fins, then another section of airframe tubing for hatch covers and attachment seams. People were in the lab at all hours, too: Paul worked on the various flat-panel layups of fins and bulkheads and rings; Ian beveled the carbon honeycomb fins using a John Coker jig on a bench sander; Eddie, Julian, Chris, and I worked feverishly on the nose cone mold. Late one night, in the Del Taco establishment near campus, Ian, Chris, and I were catching a break for dinner. We sketched out a calendar on a napkin, trying to decide if we had enough time to finish the parts, let alone the rocket. The answer was a conclusive maybe.

May 19th rolled around, and, as if by a miracle, we had all the airframe parts ready to assemble, except for the nose cone. I left the lab that night with rough dimensions for the hatch cover, to which I was to mount the avionics package, and left the team in the building with all the lights on, a pile of Del Taco food, a bunch of rocket parts, and some epoxy. I finished up the avionics package (my Loki ARTS and G-Wiz LC) at home around 2 AM and packed up the miscellaneous items I could think of necessary for a launch. I crashed out to sleep around 3 AM and woke up again at 5 AM to head back to the lab. Thankfully, my dad offered to drive that day, so I could nap in the car. If only the rest of the team had been so lucky.

We pulled up on campus around 7 AM to find a flurry of activity still going on in the lab. There was something roughly rocket-like looking on the table, to which Ian was attaching the boat tail. The nose cone was still in the oven at the time I arrived, but it was due to be taken out in the next 30 minutes. I got to work on the fin fillets with a bottle of West G5 epoxy and some carbon dust for the cool black effect. The rest of the team was in pretty worn shape, napping in various awkward positions in chairs, on 55 gallon drums, and behind desks. Del Taco wrappers were everywhere. The fin fillets were complete, the avionics jiggled into place, and the nose cone finalized. 8 AM, the morning of the launch, the rocket was finally done. Now all we had to do was fly it.

The drive to the Reaction Research Society's Mojave Test Area was uneventful. We were hoping for eventful, since we attached the rocket to the roof of Ian's bright red Jeep Cherokee before we left. Nonetheless, we finally arrived at the test area around 10 AM, at which point we unloaded into the quonset hut on site and began to prep the rocket. Thankfully, my rocketry instincts took over, and with the entire team double-checking each other, things got put together properly for flight. On 2 hours of sleep we were unstoppable.

Finally, around 2 PM, we were ready to do the unimaginable: fly the rocket. 24 hours ago, the rocket didn't exist. It was like the Discovery Rocket Challenge "From the Ground Up" contest, except it was a high performance rocket. And it wasn't a TV show. Externally, I remained cool as I armed the avionics and installed the Rick Dickinson-built Thermite igniter, but walking away from the pad after a final handshake with Ian, I had my doubts. You would have too. Honestly, it was a 6-inch airframe design that had never been tested, with four thin honeycomb fins that should be flutter-proof, held together with two-hour-old epoxy and attached to the parachute with a honeycomb bulkhead, built by sleep deprived college students. In the words of Neil McGilvray, "It's a rocket, what could go wrong?"

We retreated to the bunkers and I radioed the blockhouse that we were ready. Dave Crisalli gave a ten count, and at zero the L820 motor came to life immediately. Check-point one passed successfully: motor ignited. The rocket began to move up the rail. Checkpoint two passed: the motor didn't fly through the airframe. It cleared the rail and weathercocked downrange, just like it was supposed to. A few seconds later, the rocket passed through Max Q without a hitch. Checkpoint three passed: the fins didn't come off. We were ecstatic, hollering from the bunker at the project we had nearly spontaneously generated. The woman at the end of the bunker called for quiet so we could hear it come in ballistic, and, in that moment of euphoria and emotion, I yelled back at her that it wouldn't come in ballistic, there would be a parachute. She responded, "How do you know?" And I quipped back: "I know. I built it."

Watch the first flight Ten or so seconds later, the vehicle slowed down at apogee, the sun glinting off the natural carbon fiber finish, and the ARTS did its thing to get the chute out. The red and blue Rocketman canopy appeared against the sky, and we were home. It drifted about two miles away in the stiff breeze, over a pile of tumbleweeds and into a clearing. We fetched the rocket and carried it back by hand through the brush, and made it back into the quonset hut. We did it - we flew a rocket the same year we started the lab. Cool! So that was all well and good. We got some nice coverage in the school newspaper and on the school of engineering website. But the fact that we had yet to actually push the limits of anything bugged us. I still was working on an N motor, and the rocket did have a 98mm motor mount...

We took the summer off for other projects. I got a job in retail for a few months, and totally forgot about rocketry for a while. But as August approached with the start of the school term, the itch began to come back, and I started running some fresh numbers on what we could fit in the 48-inch long motor mount. The result was a 18,000 N-sec motor, designed to have a 6 second burn time. Sounded good to everybody, so we started to work on preparing the rocket for its next flight. Not much was necessary to prepare for flight two. We had the rocket built and the launch was two months away - miles ahead of where we were last time! But snags quickly appeared - the launch was scheduled for the same weekend as I was supposed to be at the X-Prize Cup. And since I "had" to go to the Cup, I left the team with the motor, instructions for prep, and a big high five.

I went to the X-Prize Cup thinking about Del Carbon. I tossed and turned in my bed on Friday night in New Mexico thinking about the flight. It was like having the stress of actually being there, without the cool factor of seeing your rocket fly. Saturday morning I eagerly awaited word of the flight result. By midday I was convinced that my motor had blown the rocket to bits and pieces, and nobody in the lab wanted to be my friend anymore. Then, around 2:30 PM, I got a text message from Paul. All it said was:

"21,651"

and I knew, from that one number, that (1) they had prepped the rocket, (2) they had put the rocket on the pad, (3) the motor had ignited, (4) the motor had worked, (5) the rocket didn't shred going through Mach, even though we built the thing in one night from five minute epoxy, (6) they had wired the avionics right and turned them on, (7) the parachute had deployed, and (8) they found the rocket. Watch the second flight Watch the long version Not bad for a motley crew of college students. I made a total fool of myself at the cup because I was so happy. The motor had pushed the rocket to the above mentioned 21K+ number and well through the speed of sound, and the rocket came back asking for more, with nary a scratch. The custom decals provided by JetMech Design had been peeled back from the velocity of the flight, and the nozzle suffered damage when the rocket hit the ground, but these were easy things to fix. And in the true rocket nerd spirit, we regrouped in the lab, looked at each other, and said: "Let's do it again!"

We made up a new nozzle with a slightly larger throat to get a nice erosive kick off the pad, and made some other tweaks to the rocket. We added a blacksky ARRD for dual deployment, upsized the chute a little bit, and made a shiny new radio-transparent Kevlar nose cone. Inside, our resident electronics geek Chris Fenton (so nerdy his side project was building a laptop from integrated circuits... It worked, and his website got Slashdotted) secured a self-designed and hand-built GPS recording unit, which gave surprisingly accurate altitude measurements during flight. Bryce from the microsattelite program also built a new version of his nifty altitude-pressure-humidity-favorite-pizza-topping-recording transmitting CanSat, and Pez and Jen from our team built an awesome tilt-pan-yaw capable dish antenna to receive his data from the rocket. Seems if people hear you're flying a rocket, they've got stuff to fly in it. The whole "useful payload" thing is an awesome concept - it's something I've never experienced before in high power rocketry, and I guess something I'll have to get used to if I hope to one day work in this business. Our third flight took place on April 29th of this year, just over eleven months from the original flight date. The motor worked even better this time, with smooth operation and an awesome throaty roar. Bryce's unit transmitted altitude, velocity, and other useful data all the way up and all the way back down (it was a relief to know the chute had deployed), and Chris' GPS unit worked smoothly too. The rocket was recovered near the launch site, and remains intact and ready to fly again.

Watch the third flight Thus is the story of Del Carbon. For those wondering, yes, it got its name all those nights ago in the Del Taco on the corner of 28th and Fig as we alternately pondered menu items and rocket parts. At this point, the vehicle has served its purpose and will likely be placed in the engineering building, next to the Aero Design Team blended wing body aircraft in the student lounge. If you're ever in LA, come check us out. We'll also be at BALLS this year testing our next project which, against previous form, is already under construction.

Del Carbon is the result of a lot of Rocksim, a lot of SolidWorks, a little back-of-the-napkin engineering, and a very fast build job, and we're pretty proud of it. It's a fantastic, strong, high-tech, reliable, and unbelievably light rocket that allowed us to hone our composite techniques for future rockets, helped us gain greater footing in the university system, and build and maintain strong team bonds. And of course, like any rocket, we love it because we built it.