Erik's Reflection

     The Martian project was fun and we had a lot of freedom to design our own rocket. I liked this project because it was fun to simulate a launch. I was disappointed that I missed the launch due to an illness, but my group members kept me updated on what happened. Overall, our launch was not successful.We got to an altitude of 20 feet. Our rocket didn’t make it to “orbit”, but the egg survived. I think our rocket failed due to an imbalance in its weight, which caused it to tip over mid flight.

     First we brainstormed designs and did research to find out what designs have been the most successful for NASA. Next, we drew our 2D model and orthographic projection. We designed our rocket based on the Atlas V module. This module consists of a wide nose cone to house the payload and then it connects to a smaller body tube. We thought that this design would be the most successful because in previous NASA launches, it performed flawlessly. Unfortunately, our version of the Atlas V did not function as well as the actual rocket. Our initial tests of our recovery system were perfect, but when we put it into the rocket, it failed to deploy.

     We had to change minor flaws in our design multiple times because we realized that although it looked good on paper, we would not be able to construct it using the materials that we had. Many of these flaws came from connecting the nose cone to the body, and the body to the engine. Another factor that we had to fix was what fins to use and where to put them. We had to move the fins 3 times before we got it right.

     Our first rocket has a 1” clear plastic body tube to house the engine, which is then connected to a cardboard 1” body tube that holds the fins, and that is connected to a 2” cardboard body tube that allows the nose cone and payload to be attached to the rocket. We used duct tape, hot glue, and a 3D printed connector piece to hold the pieces together. It was top heavy because of the widened nose cone and smaller body, but we didn’t think that it would majorly affect our launch. We thought that our design was acceptable, but we knew that it could have used improvements.

     We later had to change our design to lose weight. Our first rocket weighed about 5 oz, but we had to  lower that down to 3 oz. In order to do this, we removed the wide nose cone, and housed the payload in the body tube. We also removed 5 in. of body tube to make the rocket shorter and lighter. All of these adjustments cut our rockets total weight down to 3.7 oz.

     I think that our rocket was designed well, but when built, it had flaws that we didn’t notice. If we had noticed these flaws early on, we could have fixed them and our rocket would have been successful. Overall, our rocket failed due to an imbalance of the weight, and the parachute was packed into the body too tightly. Our rocket costed $1,507,786, and this price seems low for a rocket. I think that we should have used higher quality materials to make a higher quality final product.  I liked this project and I would do it over again given the opportunity. If I did this project again, I would use a more simplified design that would produce less flaws.