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After the success of Cal Poly's First Liquid Rocket in May 2024, a team of myself and five other students decided to make a successor—this time with a regeneratively-cooled engine instead of an ablative one. This was an ambitious undertaking, as our club, SLO Propulsion Technologies (SPT), had never attempted to fly a liquid engine before.
Taking on the lead for a project like this was initially far out of my comfort zone, as I typically prefer to stick to manufacturing and testing work. However, I really wanted to see this project happen, and I'm glad I challenged myself to take on a new role. I learned to and became comfortable managing my team, delegating tasks, scheduling meetings, reviews, and tests, managing documentation, and procuring materials and resources. Since the team was small, I was still able to find time to participate in manufacturing, assembly, testing, integration, and designing safety protocols and testing and launch operations. I also enjoyed being the lead operator for all our testing and for the final launch attempt.
Unfortunately, the rocket did not successfully launch due to a hard start. I am nonetheless proud of what my team and I were able to accomplish and we gained so much invaluable experience.
Below is a one of our system reviews meant to give a thorough overview and some rationale for our rocket design. A brief
GooseIIFinalDesignReview.pdfBuild Photos
Build Photos
I find and fix an unexpected leak in our engine.
Engine lead Harvey prepares and installs his engine.
I work on assemnling the rocket body.
I prep the engine by filling the regen chanels with fuel.
The Goose II team at the launch pad.
The Failure
The Failure
What happened?
What happened?
Our rocket failed spectacularly on the launch pad due to (in my opinion) a hard start in the engine that the engine structure could not withstand. What followed was both propellants expelling from the injector and fueling a massive fireball (the propellants expelled completely and nominally, just as they had in our cold flows, which was a silver lining). The rocket's rail guides also did not withstand the shock from the hard start, causing the rocket body to detach from the rails.
Our team anticipated a failure like this one, probably more-so than most rocketry teams do. Due to time and budget constraints, we made a highly controversial decision to not do any hot fire testing of our engine. We had done sufficient hydrostatic and cold flow testing to know that our mechanisms were solid, and those held up during our launch attempt. We knew that chances of failure during launch were incredibly high, but we wanted to take the one shot we had rather than not see a launch attempt.
More unexpectedly than our rocket failure was the shocking amount of rocket that survived. Only the engine, fins, and bolts connected to the engine were destroyed. Even the injector, which was directly exposed to the blast, was unharmed. This is an easy fix that would cost well under $500.
The rest of the rocket is in Cal Poly's hands for next year's students to take over. Future work includes redesigning the engine and, this time, hot firing it before attempting another launch.
MVI_3567_rotated.movGoogle Sites
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