Last year, members from 黑料吃瓜网鈥檚 student aerospace design team, , competed virtually in an international competition for the first time. They ended up taking home third place in their category and ninth in the overall competition.
Case Rocket Team is one of 黑料吃瓜网鈥檚 design teams located on the fifth floor of Sears think[box]. The highly diverse team has about 10-15 active members who are undergraduate, master's and PhD students, as well as alumni. The team is not exclusive to aerospace and mechanical engineering鈥攃hemical engineering and computer science students also participate in team projects.
鈥While rockets are very aerospace centric, we have a lot of different problems at play that can tie in to most STEM majors,鈥 Case Rocket Team President Maddie Barto noted. 鈥淚n the past, the team has attended other types of competitions like Battle of the Rockets, and we spend a lot of time researching and developing technology for our rockets like sewing our own parachutes and experimenting with winding our own fiberglass tubes.鈥
The competition they participated in was , which brings together rocket enthusiasts from around the world with the goal of launching a rocket 10,000 feet. While there were no launches because the competition was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Case Rocket Team built two scale test rockets they tested multiple times; submitted their 143-page report paper; participated in a Q&A session with the judges; and they were selected for a podium presentation to talk about their .
The lengthy report is what helped them snag third place in the competition. Fortunately, the majority of the paper involved talking about what they had worked on all year鈥攖he logistics involved to launch a rocket 10,000 feet.
鈥淲e were unable to hold many launches my freshman year as that was the beginning of the pandemic,鈥 explained Barto. 鈥淚 was worried we wouldn鈥檛 be able to build and launch as successfully with limited access and less people on campus, so it was amazing to see several test rockets come together and be launched while the majority of classes were completely remote.鈥
Though the competition rocket is their main focus, they also host other vital programming鈥攕uch as introducing new members to rocketry and the engineering design process. And, everyone has the opportunity to design and build their own high-powered rocket.
鈥淥nce they are ready, we take everyone out to our launch site and have an awesome day of launches,鈥 said Russel Lubin, public relations manager for the team.
To learn more about the Case Rocket Team, . To donate directly to the team to help members launch their own rocket, and put the club鈥檚 name in the designation box.
