Happy Summer!

With the coming of warm weather and summer internships, Rocket Lab has slowed down its killer pace to gain valuable industry experience and reflect back on what has thus far been achieved. In May, we pulled together a full scale static fire to continue testing for our latest project Traveler. In a stunning three weeks of hard, treacherous work, Rocket Lab showed that its members are able to accomplish anything, even if it seems impossible.

Testing out at the Reaction Research Society site in Mojave, CA proved to be an educational trip where we experienced a rapid unscheduled dis-assembly. We consider this to be a successful test in that we gained valuable information about the nature of carbon fiber that have allowed us to re-evaluate several aspects of the design to make our rocket flight ready and successful. As Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work." The purpose of static fires is to test what we have done thus far and see what can be improved or changed before taking the final step and launching. We have done that.

We were also able to prove a new nozzle design, which we see as a great success.

So with happy hearts and energetic minds, we look to the Fall, when we will bring what we have learned from our respective internships this summer to the table to create some of the best rockets a university will ever be lucky enough to produce.

Keep your eyes on this site, because in the next few months, we hope to dazzle.

-Sarah Hester

We have finally fired Trunnion, and it was an amazing success. Our first 8" composite motor has fired, and we couldn't be more excited to move on to our next project - a full length, 8" diameter, 6 bates-grain flight motor. Despite being on April Fool's day, the static firing of our 2 grain Trunnion motor went without any major surprises.This test-fire was not just an ordinary motor performance test. Firing Trunnion was a demonstration of USCRPL's own composite motor case technology, and luckily it was a demonstration of its feasibility and effectiveness. Everything went to plan - the integration of our equipment on site, the data-acquisition setup, the assembly of the motor and its hardware, and the actual firing.

The data we acquired looks great. The thrust curve looks beautiful (classic flat Bates-Grain profile), and within ~60lbs of our theoretical thrust calculations. The pressure and temperature data are also all within a safe range, and we believe that we are more than ready to move on to construction of our planned high thrust flight motor, which will be three times the length of this one. One note: The main difference between this firing of Trunnion and the one last November is the nozzle construction. The last design won't be flown because it was designed with a significant factor of safety and is therefore much too heavy.

On to photos of the launch!

A nice view of one of the bates grains


Jordan attaches an insulator plate to the top of the grain

This is Alec and Mitch's baby. The carrier is all steel, and you can see it heat up white-hot in the video below

Fitting the liner with the grains into the motor case

Ian Whittinghill and Dave Crisalli inspect the assembly of the motor

Joe readies the data acquisition hardware. We had three thermocouples, one pressure sensor, and one strain gauge


Assembling the thrust stand (informally known as "Jordan's Last Stand")

Mach diamonds!

After setbacks and weather delays, Trunnion was successfully static-fired today. Countless hours of work went into this project, and we are ecstatic that everything went to plan.

Now on to the 6-grain......



We still have quite a bit of data to go through, so there will be more posted soon.

Rocket Lab lately has been a busy place. The largest time-consuming element of our work as of now has been Trunnion, but that is about to change. We are nearing completion of the rebuilt Trunnion, even though our firing date has been moved back several times. Unfortunately for us, Mojave has been inundated with enough water from recent rains that it would be too difficult to drive out there to test-fire Trunnion. And it doesn't seem like it is going to dry up too soon if we keep seeing the weather we have been lately. This means that even though we are ready to fire, we are simply going to have to move on to other projects.

But the rebuilding has so far been a success. Since we haven't been as pressed for time as we originally planned for, Alec and Mitch have been able to let quite a few other members try their hand at machining parts on the lathe. And the cleanup/preparation of the motor case has gone smoothly. The only thing left to do is to finish machining the nozzle carrier, and we will be ready to go (see pictures below).

Otherwise, we are getting steadily closer to launching Del Grande. The upper section of the body has been layed up, and we used a hi-temp mold release that more easily facilitated the fiberglass' separation with the mandrel. Also, we have finished work on the nosecone mold plug, which will soon be used to create a new nosecone for Del Grande.

Here are a few photos from lab:

Cutting our fiberglass casting tubes:


An insulator plate from the last firing: notice the aluminum droplets that condensed from the aluminum in the propellant.

A close-up of the droplets:

The nosecone mold plug being trimmed on the lathe:

Finished nosecone mold plug after a layer of fiberglass and tons of Bondo:

A newly-machined aft motor case bulkhead:

Del Grande in the background and the newly created body tube section ready to be joined together:

Machining the steel nozzle carrier:




Del Carbon is now hung up! Doesn't it look beautiful?

Tim, Vlad, Scott, and Jordan discussing Mach Madness designs:

Vlad working on a mach madness fin mold: