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Aerospace Engineering

Aerospace engineering handles the development and creation of spacecrafts and aircrafts as well. Engineers in this region design and create vehicles that fly commercially or privately as well as creating space ships that go into space for research purposes. Some common workplaces in this field include Boeing and NASA. Boeing devotes their engineering to create commercial airliners to fly as many people as possible, as fast as possible, while also limiting cost and usage of fuels. NASA has been known to develop many spaceships that take humans and robots into space to further understand the world outside of ours.

Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical engineering is arguable the most diverse engineering region. When mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind are gears. That's rightfully so, as most mechanical engineers deal with components that move. From escalators to electric engines, mechanical engineers devote their lives to create many components that make our lives run smoothly. Mechanical engineers have been a vital part for human development for centuries, and they will forever progress us forward.

Chemical Engineering

Chemical engineering deals which all things chemicals. They create ways to produce and manufacture products through chemicals in order to make life more sustainable. One example of this would be synthetics in our clothes. Chemical engineers not only use their vast knowledge of chemistry, but they also use physics, maths, biology, and economics to effectively create the most reasonable products. In dealing with many things such as petroleum and food, chemical engineers help create a more sustainable and healthy world for everyone to live in.

Industrial Engineering

Industrial engineers design and create equipment and manufacturing lines to develop many of the devices we own today. They are also responsible for the safety of workplaces and the planning and control aspect of them as well. One of the lesser known regions of engineering, industrial engineers work in the background to improve the functionality of systematic processes utilizing materials such as computer simulations as well as the skill of interpersonal communication.

Design Process

1. Define the Problem

Our world faces important problems with climate change. Our average temperature each year increases which causes many ice caps to melt which leads to rising sea levels. In addition, many marine species needs certain water temperatures to be able to live, and if those water temperatures keep rising, then those species will eventually become extinct. On land, if the temperature keep rising, we will face problems such as droughts and heat waves that will make life difficult. All these problems and more are reasons why we need to limit climate change, and to do that we need to find ways to filter out greenhouse gases that retain heat in the atmosphere.

2. Generate Alternative Solutions

We need to create a rocket to propel a carbon dioxide capture device into the atmosphere. Alternative solutions to this pertains to the capturing device and the design of the rocket. For one, we have the freedom to create a capturing device of any design. One design we came up with were a propeller that would spin and fall to the ground and some hood around it to filter out the carbon dioxide. Another design was creating a tube with a filter inside that captures carbon dioxide as it falls through. This tube will be strung with a parachute and will slowly descend to the ground capturing as much carbon dioxide as possible within its tracks. For the rocket, we have the ability to change the apogee to find the best possible height at which to drop the carbon capturing device. We found that it had to be near the ozone or higher in order to capture as much carbon dioxide as possible.

3. Evaluate and Select a Solution

We decided on creating the tube for the carbon capture device, as our previous solution was not reasonable. Then, we decided on the tube as the fan solution was not reasonable since it is an unnecessary moving part.

4. Detail the Design

In detailing the rocket, we had to affix fins to the side so that the center of pressure is below the center of gravity which makes our rocket stable. We also had to strategically choose the types of engines so that the rocket will reach the altitude we planned. For the capturing device, we had to create a way so that a carbon dioxide filter can be placed within the tube without falling out. We also had to design the shape of the tube so it can be most aerodynamic when descending to the ground.

5. Defend the Design

We saw both designs to be the best possible solutions we have though of. The rocket was designed to reach reasonable altitudes, and the carbon dioxide capture device was reasonable in filtering out the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere as it feel towards the ground.

6. Manufacture and Test

We are unable to test the carbon dioxide capture device. However, we tested the rocket using Rocksim and found that the rocket easily reached altitudes that we hoped for as well as descending safely back to the ground.

7. Evaluate the Performance

We saw the performance of the rocket to be up to our satisfaction as it reached the ozone layer and safely parachuted towards the ground. We decided that this was the best iteration of a rocket we could have created.

8. Prepare the Final Design Report

We decided to progress with both designs we had and that we were confident in its capabilities to capture and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide gases in the atmosphere. As a group, we were very pleased by how the 3 stage model rocket worked.