Spaceport America Cup 2020 - 2021
I became the Structures Team Lead for BYU Rocketry’s premier team, which has competed every year since 2017 at the Spaceport America Cup, an international collegiate competition at the Spaceport America in New Mexico. In 2023, BYU would go on to win the overall competition.
The Senior High Power Team consisted of four sub-teams: Structures, which designs and manufactures the airframe and models the flight characteristics of the rocket, Payload, which designs and builds a 3U cubesat-sized payload to operate a demonstration mission, Guidance and Navigation Control, which owns the recovery system for a safe flight and recovery of the rocket, and the Airbrakes Capstone Team, which designed a unique system of sensors and mechanisms which input velocity during flight, predicted the apogee, then deployed airbrake fins to increase drag and place the apogee on target.
As the Structures team lead, I worked closely with each of these subteams to ensure their systems integrated well with the overall structure design.
A rigorous design process
As Structures Team lead, I worked with BYU’s composites professors and lab techs to develop a process to repeatably produce carbon fiber body tubes. This process cut down our manufacturing time, and allowed us to create a strong, beautiful rocket that showcases our technical abilities.
