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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@gmail.com

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

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Spe

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(ft

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Acc

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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 datyam@ucsd.edu

Seeman Farah Vice-President sfarah@ucsd.edu

Jay Gokhale Secretary jgokhale@ucsd.edu

Vicken Bekarian Treasurer vbekaria@ucsd.edu

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