With the recent STF 4 failure fresh in the minds of this semester’s team, updates and modifications to the system (especially the structure subsystem) are being made in hopes to achieve a successful STF this semester. The current plan is for STF 5 to happen on March 15th and 16th. If you are unfamiliar with HYSOR, click on the link below for a broad overview of the project. Be sure to check each of the specific subsystems for updates on their status.
The goal of a STF is mainly to get a flight/thrust profile to give to the FAA to ensure that the rocket complies with FAA regulations. Once successful, focus can be switched to getting the rocket ready for a launch. As the team has designed certain components they have tried to design everything so that it is ‘flight-ready’ – meaning it won’t have to be changed for a launch. However, after a successful STF, there will still be much to do. If the rocket requires a hold-down structure so that it doesn’t take off too early, that will have to be designed (although the current team has some ideas of how that might work). Also, the fins, the skin, and the nose-cone must be designed. The idea is to use spin-stabilization to stabilize the rocket in flight which is not trivial. This will require quite a bit of design work and analysis. With that said, the current rocket launch date is predicted to be sometime in Spring 2014.
