Blog #13 | Fire and Ice

This has been a critical week of testing and planning for our upcoming hotfire on Friday. Team elections happened this past Monday, with the positions of President and Vice President being the most contested positions with 3 candidates each. Our polls will close this Thursday, and we look forward to introducing our new leaders to all of you next week!

We were finally able to get our new impinging flow system working last night after our 3rd coldfire test which was a crucial part of being able to have a hotfire this week. In order to work overtime to get ready, we are having a full team engineering meeting tonight. Current parts still awaiting completion are the incorporation of our pressure and temperature sensors, testing different ignition mixtures, and fully preparing our horizontal test stand for its first hotfire.

This test will mark the first time we have attempted a hotfire with our V2 engine after redesigning every component from top to bottom as well as changing fuel types. After many improvements in our flow regulation system, the avionics team has worked out a much more consistent and reliable way to control our nitrous gas. By changing fuel types to paraffin wax, we’ve also created a more reliable way to ignite. These two parts of the engine have been the biggest causes of previous hotfire failures, so now that we’ve completely revamped them both, we are much more confident that this test will be successful.

We have a special announcement about our Vice President, Thomas Collins! He has just been accepted into the prestigious Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program and will be having an internship at Rocket Lab this summer. UNH Today wrote a great article which you can read here about his story! This is now the 2nd UNH student who has been accepted to the program, meaning this won't be a short term thing. Our leaders have paved the way for future UNH engineers to get into the commercial space industry, which will be a legacy continuing for years to come.