I personally enjoyed the Martian(Rocket) project, and I felt like it was a great learning experience that simulates the “real world”, because this project taught us to be prepared for any unexpected challenges that come up. When brainstorming ideas for our rocket, I felt like we could have come up with more unique ideas, as as lot of our ideas were similar.

     When we chose our final design, our whole group agreed to the design, and our research suggested it would be a good idea. Since I was the Watney of our group, I was in charge of the orthographic models. Although it could get boring and repetitive at times, for the most part I enjoyed the task. We decided that fleece would be the best padding for our egg capsule, because it is easily manipulated, and we are proud of that decision. Rodney was in charge of the center of pressure calculations. He ran into a couple issues when first figuring out the cP. At first, we didn't know the formula to calculate it, as there were multiple formulas Mr. Holler sent. Once Ms. Frantz came in, Rodney had a much easier time calculating it.

     After the 3D and 2D models were drawn, we started construction of the rocket. We hit a lot of roadblocks. One minor roadblock was despite our original egg capsule shape being a cone, we had to settle for a square based pyramid due to the materials accessible. Other than that, I felt our egg capsule was good. When building the rocket, we needed to construct a device which would attach a smaller tube to a larger tube. We decided we would 3D print the device, but we modeled the device incorrectly, so the print came out bigger than wanted. We worked around this by using cardboard as spacers to fit into the device. Another thing we didn't account for was that the tube we would originally place the engine in was too fragile, so we had to buy clear tube, cut it, and hot glue it to the bottom of the rocket.

     One day before the launch, we were notified that our rocket’s weight had to be reduced to 3 ounces. Our rocket weighed in at 5 oz., so to get down to 3 oz. would be a challenge. Along with that, we were also notified that instead of using a normal chicken egg, we would use quail eggs, which were significantly smaller and lighter. Our first design decision was to remove the original egg capsule, as it was very large because it was supposed to house a chicken egg; and it was contributing to a lot of the weight. We relocated the new egg to the body tube because the egg would fit snug in there. When this newer rocket was weighed, we were still over 3 oz.. Our group decided to shorten the body tube to reduce some more weight. After this revision, our rocket was around 3 oz. with the engine and quail egg. once the rocket was assembled, Rodney recalculated the cP, which was easier this time around as he was more experienced

     On launch day, our rocket travel around 20 ft (4.5 Rodney’s). I expected our rocket to go higher, and our parachute apparatus to work. Part of the reason I think the rocket didn’t perform as well as expected was because our 3D printed connector was adding weight towards the middle, causing it to turn early. One possible reason the parachute didn’t work was because we didn’t get the rocket in the air long enough for the pressure to build up. Another reason could be that the parachute was packed in tightly inside the body tube and couldn’t release. Overall, even though we could have done better, at least the quail egg survived.

     In conclusion, this project was very fun, yet challenging. I would do some things differently though. One of the things I would do differently is to model the connector piece correctly, for a more aerodynamic design. Another thing I would have done differently is to have a better engine housing idea, as the clear tube hot glued to the end does not seem practical. One thing that would have been nice to know before the project started is the final goal weight of the rocket, because I feel that would have influenced our design choices differently.