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The NASA sim was primarily for simulating our final actual rocket design. With it, we first entered the dimensions of the parts of the rocket design, including the length of the rocket body and length and shape of the nose cone, as shown in Figures 1 and 2. We used it to see how the shape of the fins, the rocket, and the position of the payload affected centers of pressure and gravity respectively, and changed the design of the fins and added weight on different places of the rocket in order to make sure that the design was stable with the center of gravity above the center of pressure. We originally thought that the rocket motor being used weighed 2.3oz (65g), while it was actually approximately 0.5oz (14g) meaning that we had to redesign the rocket to add additional weight near the bottom instead of the top with the design used for our first test.
The simulator also was able to predict characteristics of the flight of the rocket (height and flight time) based on our rocket design and ideal conditions.
Fig. 1: The initial design of the rocket based on the instructions given. This model didn't have any modifications from our ideas stated in our design. However, we made these modifications in Figure 2.
Fig. 2: The design of our rocket with the payload from the DataBot, the counterweight, and the the weight from the engine, fins, and nose. We also changed the dimensions of the simulation to match the design in our drawing.
Fig. 3: The simulation of our rocket in flight. Our rocket flew 49 feet into the air from this simulation, which wasn't as ideal as we were hoping for. Although the thrust to weight ratio of the rocket was greater than 1, meaning it would lift off the ground, we needed our rocket to go higher, especially for the second charge to occur from the engine before the rocket hit the ground. So, after seeing this simulation and testing the rocket the first time, we lowered the weight of our rocket to remedy this.
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