IMPACT AT MUDD
The secondary goal of EHPS is to promote student lead research, and improve on existing aerospace programs at Harvey Mudd. Although an amateur rocketry club (MARC) already exists on campus, it is limited in scope due to its lack of long term goals and organization. Most student rocketry projects fall under the umbrella of hobby rocketry with little scientific gain. Many of the students involved in EHPS are members of MARC and would like to see the club move beyond its current status as an informal collection of personal projects. We see the development of a hybrid propulsion system as the first step towards establishing on campus research in propulsion systems and related fields in aerospace.
The team also sees EHPS as a way of strengthening the community and promoting the common core here at Harvey Mudd. By its very nature a hybrid motor spans many of
the STEMS disciplines. Physics and engineering are required to design and model the systems and it controls; computer science will provide the software that governs control of our mechanical system; last, but not least, without chemistry we would not be able to model the performance of the motor fuel. The team’s composition already includes engineers with a variety of interests as well as a computer science major. We hope that as EHPS grows, it will foster a spirit of collaboration between the different departments by pulling in expertise and resources from the physics, chemistry, computer science and engineering departments.
INTERCOLLEGIATE DEVELOPMENT
Due to the complex nature and cost of rocket propulsion, collaboration between universities is key to a project’s success. If reliable low cost controlled hybrid motors were developed, the benefits to collegiate research would be invaluable. Examples include the creation of more efficient sounding rockets for experimental payloads in the earths atmosphere, the ability to test different fuel and oxidizer combinations to improve the technologys practicality and sending college built rockets
to space for the first time. Cornell University and Boston University are two colleges that are looking to collaborate on such projects. Matt Gentile, the Vice President of the Cornell University Rocketry Team (CRT), will be helping EHPS during the fall semester while working at Jet Propulsion
Laboratory.
CRT was founded in the fall of 2012 to compete in the NASA Student Launch Initiative (USLI) in the spring of 2014, but due to the cut in government spending caused by sequestration, the competition was canceled. In the wake of this change, the team has begun making connections with
rocket-based teams across the country in order to jump start collaborative student research projects in the field. CRT has experience in composite rocket construction using solid fuel motors, but due to the benefits of controlled hybrid propulsion for higher altitude re-usable rockets, developing this technology with EHPS would benefit both projects. Hybrid propulsion is also considered safer for university use as both oxidizer and solid propellant are kept separate and unreactive until launch.
Boston University is also looking to partner with Cornell, as they are also studying hybrid propulsion and can provide insight to the EHPS project.