Blog #7 | SpaceVision 2019

We’re so excited to share our experiences at the SpaceVision conference with all of you! The conference went from November 7th to the 10th with many panels, workshops, and a whole lot of networking. During the STEAM fair event, the University of New Hampshire had 2 booths presenting their work on Usurper, our experimental hybrid rocket and QuadSats, a method for testing satellite data recording using quadcopters. We plan to release a vlog with all of the footage from the event within the next few weeks, so stay tuned for that!

In some exciting news that happened during the conference, our very own president Charlie Nitschelm was elected as the chair of the entirety of SEDS USA! At SpaceVision, there was a career fair with many of the top aerospace companies scouting out new recruits. Some of our members managed to get interviews on the spot for Lockheed Martin, and everyone was able to do a lot of networking at the fair. Other events included resume and simulation workshops, socials with some of the top brass in the industry, and lots of panels discussing anything from Mars to What working on rockets is really like.

For engineering news, we are currently experimenting with ignition methods for Runaway that build up the pressure and temperature in the combustion chamber before the oxidizer flows through the system. The frame team has finalized their decision on what the internal structure of the rocket will be after writing decision reports on all of our options. Moving forward from this week, Runaway v2 is in the making with a whole new approach to ignition and the nitrous impinging plate as well as modified dimensions making it thinner and longer to reduce weight.