Rocket Design Project

Throughout the course of this project, I was given another opportunity to collaborate with my fellow tablemates from the last project we worked together on, namely Kobe Chen, Joseph Ficarra, and Kaito Suzuki, whose positions from left to right can be seen in the top image on the left. The objective of this project was centered around designing and modeling a projectile that could fly over a football field, covering a distance of 100 yards, and successfully pass through a field goal post, using nothing but construction papers, tape, and any other materials approved by our teacher, Mr. McGarrah. Although the use of additional materials was unlikely to be approved, Thankfully, however, the constraints presented to us were very easy to work with and did not require us to change up our initial plans too much. The delivery system for the projectile was provided by our teacher, who gave us the flexibility to launch the rocket with a force of 80 psi at any angle between 0 and 90 degrees that would provide a better flight. However, before we could start building the paper projectile, we had to present a final design sketch to Mr. McGarrah after our team ranked each of the eight sketches based on specific criteria such as weight, speed, length, width, feasibility, and width. After evaluation, we chose Kobe's sketch, which was the best for the project's objectives. I then drew the final sketch of the paper projectile, which we presented to Mr. McGarrah for approval before we could proceed with production. In this project, all our roles were relatively interchangeable, as we all worked on every single aspect of the project. But each team member contributed more to certain categories than others. Kaito was fully in charge of the NetLogo simulation, Joesph was the one who completed most of the documentation, Kobe contributed to the production of the rockets built, and I managed all our tasks and resources, making sure our deliverables matched what the rubric asked for. As we began building, we carefully documented every step of the process and the reasoning behind our design choices (which can be seen in the documentation). During the building phase, we used a rod provided by Mr. McGarrah to check the body of our rocket's fit and how much space between the body parts we would need to add to avoid too much air compression, which could cause the rocket to explode during launch. However, finding a perfect fit for the body was a bit challenging, as we struggled to roll up a piece of paper correctly on the rod. We kept trying to roll up the body on the rod, but it kept getting loose or not rolling up evenly. We decided to tape the body together even though it was not properly rolled the way we wanted. Our group decided that going with the basic design of a pointed nose with four fins at the bottom was the best idea (as seen in the third image on the left). As we determined the wings' dimensions, we concluded that the bigger they were, the more stability they would provide throughout the flight. Our finished rocket was named Musk. Soon came test day, and we were ready to test out our rocket on the football field. However, we were surprised to learn that we had to build another prototype in class (if not already built) within 40 minutes. We quickly got to work and decided to stick with basically the same design as the Musk since we did not have enough time to think of a whole other idea. We came up with another rocket, which we called McQueen, that had a similar design to Musk's but had three rounded fins instead of four. We wanted to compare the two designs and see if the smaller, lighter McQueen would provide better results (as seen in the fourth image on the left). Both prototypes were ready to launch on the field, with Musk set to launch at 35 degrees and McQueen at 45 degrees. Over 3.55 seconds, Musk reached a net distance of 62 yards (186 feet), ranking 4th within our class but falling short of 3rd place, who had reached around 70 yards (210 feet). And for McQueen, it flew over 4.03 seconds; the McQueen traveled a net distance of 33 yards (99 feet), ranking near the middle of the class. The main issue for McQueen was that it was being pushed around by the wind, most likely due to its lightweight and shorter length, which might have caused a difference in its performance. But it could have also been the angle at which we launched the rocket. The angle we shot it at could have also been too high. We also managed to film the Launch for Musk and the Launch for McQueen to show video proof of our rockets' performance. After each team in our class had launched their rocket, we were placed in 4th place. Despite not achieving first place, we were happy with our performance, given that some rockets in our class had either exploded or had only gone a few feet forward.