SAN JOSE — Finals may be over, but a couple dozen undergraduate students continue to head to a quiet San José State University campus two evenings a week. They file into an engineering classroom with model airplanes suspended overhead and an airplane engine off to one side. They sit in groups at round tables and whip out their laptops.
Their mission? To design a rocket that will reach an altitude of 100,000 feet. That’s 3 to 4 times higher than the cruising altitude of an airplane.
“At that altitude, the sky above you is black, because you are looking into space,” said Alexis Thoeny, an aerospace engineering student. “There’s virtually nothing above you.”
Earlier this year, Thoeny launched a new program at SJSU under its Rocket Club: the High Altitude Rocketry Program. The HARP team aims to send its rocket to the stratosphere from a desert launch site in Black Rock, Nevada, between Sept. 21-23. Now, all hands are on deck for a Tuesday deadline to ensure they will be prepared to submit a formal launch request to the Federal Aviation Administration 90 days in advance.
Thoeny conservatively estimates that the team’s two-stage rocket will successfully launch, reach or exceed its target altitude, and be recovered at 80 to 85 percent. If HARP does succeed, then as “a state school in our first semester of a project like this,” he said, beating the university record for altitude “would be out of the world, both literally and figuratively.”
Similar undergraduate student-run programs at other universities
Article source: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/11/student-run-program-sends-sjsu-rocket-club-to-new-heights/
