Post Launch Assessment Review
May 12th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
Download the PLAR document here
Well we made it, it has been a grueling few months, but the Frozen Fury team has had a successful, and ultimately enjoyable adventure in rocketry and education. We learned a lot in these past months, and many of us found within ourselves that we can do things we never knew we could. Leadership, craftmanship, the ability to stand up infront of an audience and speak, to communicate with young children, write complicated reports by a specific guidline. There are so many things achieved, that the list would go on forever.
One thing is for sure, the Frozen Fury rocketry team has hopes of being in this same position next year. During the car ride home we had tons of ideas and conversations revolving around what could be done next year, and what positive changes would be required to be even more successful then this year.
We have hundreds of photos from the trip, however since this website was coded in pure HTML (trust me, I'm never doing a website this complicated out of NOTE PAD ever again!) that all of the photos will ultimately never be put up on this website unless some easier means is found.
HOWEVER, I did upload all of the photos to my facebook profile, and lucky for all of you, those photo albums can be shared to the public. Here are the links to the albums.
If you haven't already had a chance, I suggest you check out the article and video posted on Rocketryplanet.com it has the launch of our team's rocket, and a small section where I talk about what our rocket is, and the payload it is carrying.
One final thanks out to our sponsors, the EERC of UND, ND Space Grant Consortium, Academic Provost, ND-STRIPE, ATK Launch Systems. We really appreciate what you all did for us, thanks again!
Day Five and Six of Our Trip
April 21st, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
So I didn't get a chance to blog last night, so here is two days worth of material. First of all, I forgot to mention that on our way to the banquet Arjay, our team member, decided to drive us to the Space and Rocketry Center for our dinner. Well, when trying to pull out of the parking lot of our hotel, he managed to drive over an entire curb. This was no small curb, this one was enormous! Kyle was in the back, and was just about to fall asleep (launch day was a very long day!) and after Arjay managed to toss the van around (no trailer attached) we all were wide awake, and the van was very quiet.... So, the keys were revoked from Arjay for the remainder of the trip, haha! It's all in good fun, and safety. So that event was saturday night.
For sunday (the rain date) we remainded in Huntsville and decided that we should go and find a Waffle House to eat at. Kyle was so determined that we ate there while down in Alabama, that we managed to go to THREE different ones. Why? Well the first one nearest our hotel was too full to accommodate our group of nine. And while trying to reach that one, we had to park a parking lot away from it because we couldn't find the road that got to it! The parking lots were not ajoined, and it was on a one way road. We were directed to another Waffle House just down the road (on University) and it turns out that the ENTIRE road was without power!!! Apparently, a small animal got in to the service station, and fried everything. So we couldn't eat there, so again we were directed to another Waffle House that was about ten minutes away. Finally, after getting turned around (we always get lost down here!) we found ourselves a nice and empty Waffle House. That food was AMAZING. Lindsay's hair smelled like Waffles for the rest of the day, and Kyle ate so much that he had to walk funny back out to the car. I believe all of us ordered the "All Star" breakfast, which was a waffle, egg, bacon/sausage, toast, hashbrowns/grits. I choose not to eat the grits, it didn't seem like my thing, but I deffinately enjoyed every bit of it. It put Perkins to shame for breakfast food, that's for sure!
After stuffing ourselves with Waffle House food, we went to the Space and Rocketry Center Museum. We purchased the museum ticket with one IMAX-3D movie ("The Sun"). The first thing we went and did was go to the sling shot ride in the rocket park. With Kyle blazing the path, Lindsay, Will, John, Arjay, Dr. Young, Tricia, and myself all road the sling shot. After the first time, John needed to get off for fear of illness, but the rest of us stayed on for one more launch! Meagan took really nice pictures of us getting shot up into the air, and free falling back down. After that ride and taking a photo of Dr. Young infront of the "Honest John" rocket that is the same one that he is building for his level 3 NAR certification, (photo is of him looking like he 'owns' the rocket behind him, very funny) we went to another ride called "G-Force Accelerator" which is the same as the carnival "UFO" ride where you stand up against the wall, and buckle in. The ship spins in place, and pins you against the wall, then your wall/chair lifts off the ground. I almost didn't go on the ride because I was afraid I could get sick, but Lindsay and Will were egging me on to go, so I toughed it up and went. I'm glad I did, I didn't get ill and I found it to be a lot of fun. Expecially in trying to lift your arms towards the center, the G-Force (actually NOT a force pushing you outward, but an inward acceleration causing the sensation of an outward force; Sorry, it's the physics nerd in me coming out!).
We made it out of the sun (we are all sun burnt pretty bad...) and into the indoor museum where we got to see things such as the Apollo 16 capsule, the Saturn IV rocket pieced apart, many different types of Saturn motors, the J2, and the shuttle's main engine, and our IMAX-3D movie about the sun. NASA sent two satellites that produced a stereo image of the sun. This gave a lot of insight to solar storms, flares, and advanced warning about CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) that is on it's way to the Earth. The material can harm satellites and ground based communications, so early warnings to these events are valued information. Unfortunately, the 3d glasses, which by the way had many of us discussing how they work since they are electronic and had IR ports on the front sides of them, gave Lindsay a headache which caused her to have a rough remainder of the day.
After the museum, we went back and took a nap for about 2 hours, all of us! We have been so exhausted, that a late afternoon nap was well worth it. We looked up online a decent resturant for us all, and found ourselves at "Logan's Roadhouse". It is just like the Texas Roadhouse in Grand Forks, except they served some pretty nice alcoholic beverages... :) Meagan and I both got Long Island Ice Teas (I had two... haha!) and Kyle had himself a few YingYlang beers which are unavailable in Grand Forks. With John the sober driver who was all sugared up on Sweetened Iced Tea, took us to the local grocery store where Kyle, Will, Meagan, and I purchased a local six pack of beer to have for the night. We had a nice relaxing evening (this is why I did not blog last night, sorry!), and we all slept in a bit for today's long drive.
So tonight, where I'm blogging from now by pawning off internet from the hotel next to us, we drove for approximately 13 hours. With a few stops for breakfast at a Burger King, and Lunch at Fazoli's. We all skipped dinner since lunch was pretty late, and we were all snacking most of the remainder of the car ride. Today though, everyone was doing homework as they could. Kyle has a very big presentation this Thursday, Meagan is finishing up her English class, Lindsay was doing some reading, Will his Norwegian homework which he has a ton of, John his Differential Equations, and Physics 252 HW, and I drove for about 9.5 hrs or so. (Kyle did the morning shift). So tonight, in Kansas City, MO - I bid you farwell, and good night, I'm sure I'll write one more write up about tomorrow boring 12 hour drive home, maybe something short and sweet. I have plans to make a page of all the pictures from this trip, or a large .zip download of them all. So look for those to be posted on the top of the page here within a week from today. Lindsay also put in a great deal of work (I feel bad for her for doing this, I asked her to do it, and we never used it..) into a 80+ page power point slide show of photos and captions for each. I bid you good night.
Day Four of Our Trip- Launch Day!
April 19th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
Oh man, what a day! Where to start? Let's first start off by mentioning something that happened tomorrow that I forgot to write about. Our lock on our magazine (a metal container, that is bullet proof for storing and transporting explosives) would not unlock. Infact, while Dr. Young was trying to unlock it, he TORE a key inside of it, and apparently it was a huge nervous moment for Arjay and Dr. Young to get the broken key out of the lock. It wasn't until we returned to the hotel, that Dr. Young using a spare key, was able to remove the lock. That was a scary moment, it's not like you can torch the lock off on an explosive box. Which is funny, because we were asking the front desk clerk about lock smiths in the area, and he brought up the fact that he had a torch we could try using... haha....
A second concern we had was from our test launch time. The test launch motor burnt through the casing. So Cesaroni overnighted the replacement liners that were a phenolic material instead of simple cardboard to our hotel here in Huntsville. I picked those up the night prior, and in the morning before our departure to the field for launch, Dr. Young and Tricia disassembled an older rocket, and assembled the newer one. Dr. Young scared us all when he talked about there being approximately 1/16th of an inch gap between the casing and the liner, which means more space for pressure to build up, and thus more chances for a motor failure. So we were very concerned about this. (or at least I was!)
We made it out to Bragg Farms (Thank you so much!) for our USLI competition launch. Many teams already were there, so we had to park further away then the rest, and set up our tent back a ways from them. This may have hurt our voting of "team spirit" and "artistic rocket" ratings that are done by the other teams.
While setting up, we became concerned that the perfectflite altimeter was not properly set to begin recording altitude. So what we did was request the user booklet from another team (forgot ours) to make sure that we understood the sequence of beeps being presented to us, and whether or not the altimeter was okay to fly. Then, after sorting that issue out, Kyle was unable to set the memory dump properly on the Digital Output Data Storage board (DODS), so he had to make sure that was squared away properly. Once that was set, we spent probably 20 plus minutes making sure the rocket is properly friction fitted. This was also a very nerve racking moment because we wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to prematurely deploy the main parachute, and if it's too tight, then it wont seperate! Thankfully, our flight was a success.
Our flight was perfect. The drogue deployed at apogee, the main 13 seconds after as we had programmed. The reason for such a short delay, and otherwise a high altitude deployment is for two reasons. We needed to balance the amount of time our payload would collect data, the longer the collection time, the smoother, and more proper our data would be, and the second reason being that we calculated that if the rocket did not deploy the drogue at apogee, that the main time delay would be shorter then the time it would take for the rocket to free fall back to earth. A safety percaution. This wasn't so noticeable by the area viewers unfortunately, but we recovered our rocket (1.5miles away approximately), and the data that will be produced should be excellent.
Upon returning our rocket to our table area, we read out the beep sequence of the perfectflite altimeter. This read: 20,007ft.... Clearly, our rocket did not obtain this altitude, and we were very concerned about this. THANKFULLY we purchased the perfectflite altimeter that does 50ms values of altitude information storage. Utah State University let us use their laptop and PerfectFlite Software (That we forgot to install on our laptop... oops!) to read out the information. Turns out, our altitude was 5108ft!!! SOO CLOSE! We were so excited about this as it put us in first as far as altitude goes. Unfortunately we celebrated a bit too early, and Vanderbilt University obtained an altitude closer to the target altitude then us of 5236ft. When you get THAT close, it is well deserving of them to win the award of closest to altitude. Well done!
Throughout the day, I believe overall there was only 4 fully successful flights, and the other three altitudes came up short for even 5,000. I believe our team, and the winning team, were the only ones to make this goal. The wind was pretty high, but a number of the rockets seemed VERY underpowered, not sure why, but some only made it to 3,500ft. There was even a rocket that rapidly disintegrated while going up, and a rocket that turned itself into a Yawn Dart, and did not deploy any parachutes, those were some VERY scary moments as safety was so heavily stressed during this competition. It's just something about a ballistic 20 pound weight falling from 4,000ft or so, straight down, is unsettling. Thankfully, all of the anomalies happened in, or landed in safe areas.
After the launch, and seeing all of the rockets go up (I got video of nearly all of them from wherever I happened to be, those will go up when I return to Grand Forks), we had our banquet that was put on by the sponsor of this competition: ATK Launch Systems. On the way there, Arjay managed to drive over a curb on accident, but with the entire vehicle. We had to stop to make sure nothing was harmed, and nothing was. Just a funny, and serious moment, we had today. So at the Space and Rocket Center, we had our banquet in the Galaxy Dinning Hall. The food was fantastic! I tried ice tea, that was warm.... For the first time, and I loved it. So sadly, I may be drinking even more tea now. Haha! There was chicke, bread, salad, green beans, and a twice baked potatoe that I tried to eat but gagged on because I have some weird issue with mashed potatoes.... So yea... Homer Hickam was there (famous from the Rocket Boys, which the movie October Sky is about) to give a speech. The Deputy Center Director, Michael Rudolphi was there also to discuss the future of the ARES program. Then finally, after the two presentations, awards were handed out to each team. The Frozen Fury did not recieve any awards in the following catagories: Best Looking, Team Spirit, Vehicle Design, Payload Design, Outreach, CDR/FRR Presentation. However, Al Krause one of the USLI directors, informed us not get down or hard on ourselves because we placed very well throughout on all accounts, and not to expect being out of the possible reach of the overall winner. So we are going to spend a fair amount of time doing statistical analysis of our data, and correlation of our data to altitude, this way when the overall winners, and Rookie winners are announced on May 26th, we have a fighting chance. Just because a team is strong in one place, doesn't mean they have been strong throughout. So our hope is since we have given forth an overall solid, and full attempt, that we can still be in consideration for the overall award. However, just this experience by itself has been a reward. None of us would have ever thought we would be down here doing this, and doing so well. To design, fund, built, and fly a rocket to a target altitude and have a working scientific payload, has been a challenge we loved overcoming, and have done so. So in that, Congradulations University of North Dakota - Frozen Fury. A job well done, and solid effort. Now lets get home (leaving monday after we see the Space and Rocket center tomorrow) and turn in a solid scientific report. Four physics majors, Two electrical engineers, and one anthropologist, we sure know how to make one hell of a scientific report, and we'll give them one they wont forget!
As a final word, we are very thankful of our sponsors: The Energy and Enviromental Research Center of UND, The North Dakota Space Grant Consortium, ND-STRIPE, ATK, and The Academic Affairs and Provost at UND. Finally again, Marshall Space Flight Center for doing this, and once more, ATK for hosting this. And of course, Bragg Farms for their land, and the Huntsville Alabama Rocketry Association (I believe their name stands for) for running the range safety at the event. Thanks to all the friends and family of all the team members for cheering us on, we really appreciate it! I'll blog once more about the Space Center tomorrow night, but I do not think I'll post one about our trip back to Grand Forks unless something else happens, like the trailer pin issue from before. Sleep time, we are all sun burnt (we did bring sunblock, but all forgot to apply it.. haha) and are exhausted. Good night.
Day Three of Our Trip- The Tour and FHC
April 18th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
Today was the Marshall Space Flight Center tour, and our Flight Hardware check at the Education Center near the Space and Rocketry Center (museum). We met at the Space and Rocketry Center at 8:15am to be bused into the Army Base, (Redstone) which contains Marshall Space Flight Center. What was really awesome was that this facility that we came to discover, is primarily a test facility for propulsion. This means we got to see a lot of rocket engines (liquids) and test facilities for this. On our agenda for the tour was four events:
First we took a tour around the testing facilities. Since this is so large, we were bused around from one area, and viewed many of the stations from the interior of our bus. One notable thing, was the light system they used for each area to denote if the place is safe, hazardous, or needing to be evacuated. It was funny that a flashing green light and horn, stood for lightning warnings and to quickly evacuate. We then were dropped off at the main test stand that was used for testing of the Russian Engine (forgot name, RPK??) the original Saturn IV motor, and the space shuttle motor. That was fasinating, this building dwarfed any structure I have ever seen. As did the structures to assemble all of the rockets, and even the shuttle once was housed in there for vibration testing.
The second stop on our tour was a lecture from Bob Armstrong regarding the ARES project (to replace the shuttle). Word is the retire of the Space Shuttle in 2010, and to full flights of the ARES in 2015, but a test flight, of the ARES I-X will be flown in April 2009. This was an insightful power point lecture regarding oppertunities in the future for many of us, and exactly what is going on. It's interesting how many different companies are apart of this, including ATK Launch Systems, who is sponsoring this contest for us (thanks!).
Our third stop was to the HOSC/POC which is basically the hub for real time data transfering of scientific payload information, and engine information. The highlight of that area was that I got to sit in a $600 computer chair for nearly 20minutes. These things were so comfortable! The reason for this was that the engineers, and people who monitor the space shuttle's motors and SRB's and fuel tank stay there for extremely long periods of time. With no shifts either. You go in two days before launch, and you don't leave until the SRB's and external tank have crashed into the ocean. A pretty big commitment if you ask me, but one that I wouldn't mind doing at all. The second area we went to was payload operations where they communicate with the astronauts to discuss what science payloads need to be done, or taken care of. We also got to see a moc-up of the ISS science room, and fiddle with some cool stuff.
Our final stop was Propulsion Research, where we got to see some moc-ups of some of the areas that are being designed, and built for the ARES I rocket. These areas were the adjoining sections of the hydrogen fuel cell to the command module, and the seperation point from the Stage One solid rocket boosters, to the liquid motor section as the second stage. Kyle and I talked about how interesting it was to have seen their break room where they have drawings of ideas they have for solving issues with some parts of the rocket, and problems they encountered. We also got to see some motor types that were 'put on the back burner', ie) the Nuclear Fission Motor, and the Boeing Power Spike motor, which was interesting. Dr. Young with his background in nulcear physics, was able to engage in some good conversation with the engineer regarding the fission motor, which was really cool. John also had some really good questions for him regarding molectular weight.
So after the tour, we returned to the hotel for some last minute sodering of our payload wires, and integration of our recovery system altimeter. This was a stressful moment as we were almost late to the Flight Hardware check where the local NAR members looked over our rocket to make sure it is properly assembled and flight ready. We were interviewed about our rocket and payload for the NASA tv channel, and talked amongst the other team members including the competition sponsors like ATK Launch Systems. The FHC went really well, and we are really looking forward to the launch tomorrow morning.
Our final stop for the day was at this BBQ restaurant called "DreamLand". We liked it for the most part, though the meat was a bit tough then we antisipated. We got some really good photos of the event, and all the photos and videos of our events will be posted online once we return and settled down next week.
Well, it's time for a good night's rest, and an early morning rocket launch! Wish us luck.
Day Two of Our Trip
April 17th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
Well, we have made it to Huntsville! It was quite the drive for us, but we made it, and we are so very excited for the tour of the Marshall Space Flight Center tomorrow morning. After that, we have our Flight Hardware Check in the evening in which our rocket will be overlooked by the NAR members, and staff to determine if our rocket is safe enough to fly.
During our drive today, after stopping for gas, we were inspecting the car and trailer, and thankfully I caught that the pin had slipped out of the hitch to the van! We requested directions from the gas station to a local parts store, and it happened to be just one stop light away. Kyle paid for it on his credit card ($10) and we had a new, and more secure, trailer hitch pin. Continuing on our drive, we made it into Huntsville at about 7:30pm after leaving Kansas City at 7:15am. While checking into our Hotel, the Hotel does not accept checks... And we had a pre-printed check, but thankfully to Kyle's credit card, we were able to pay for our hotel rooms. The plan is in the morning to talk with the manager to see whether or not we can sort this out while down here.
Up in Grand Forks the big thing has been these "Ci Ci's" tv commercials about a pizza buffet. Well, thankfully one is right across the street from our hotel, and that is where we decided to eat at tonight. For lunch, we stopped at a sit down resturant called "Steak n' Shake". That place, in my opinion, was amazing. The Frisco melt (burger) was amazing. Both Meagan and I had this, and we are still raving about it. :)
Well, it was an extremely long drive, and we are happy to have Kyle be so kind to drive the entire leg today through all of the traffic. We did have to do four turn arounds because Kyle wasn't reading the GPS properly, haha! But thankfully, NateNate, er... TomTom, was able to direct us the proper turn around points. It was a great idea of Meagan to bring her TomTom, thanks Meagan.
I'll write about the MSFC tomorrow, and the FHC. Good night, I'm exhausted from sitting in the center rear seat of our van.
Day One of Our Trip
April 16th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
We have begun our travel down to Huntsville Alabama for the USLI competition. Tonight we are staying over night at a Red Roof Inn, in Kansas City, Missouri. The drive took us alittle under eleven hours. We had a few delays in departing Grand Forks, but otherwise the trip had no hang ups. We did have one issue when using the commercial credit card, the pin we were assigned was off by one value from what it should have been, but this was quickly sorted out. Finally, after stopping for dinner at a Subway, I (Matt) managed to look like a fool by failing to back up the trailer properly out of the parking lot. After Kyle tried himself, a friendly man assisted in guiding him out. After we were out, we did a quick switcher-roo of Kyle and I in driving, and we were on our way.
Our plans are to depart Kansas City between 7am and 8am - and hopefully arrive in Huntsville at a pretty decent time in the evening. We have an early morning friday with the Tour and hardware check, so our plans are to rest up tomorrow night. So I better head to bed, we have another 10+ hours of driving left! Woot! (Today was easy, we took I-29 the ENTIRE time..... However this next leg from here, is a bit more twisty and requires more attention to direction.)
Flight Readiness and Review Submitted
March 31th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
Download the FRR document here
Download the FRR PPT here
It has been a rigorous journey, but one to remember for our lives. The University of North Dakota – Frozen Fury has completed the Flight Readiness Review, and is anxiously awaiting our departure for Huntsville Alabama on April 16th. We will be driving down there, with a stop in Kansas City over night for rest. April 19th is the scheduled time for the launch, and we couldn’t be more excited for this event. We will be doing some touring of the facilities down there at Marshall Space Flight Center, and having an enjoyable banquet following the launch. I’m fairly certain that we wouldn’t trade this opportunity for anything else. Even for all of our time back that we’ve spent as a team to make this a successful competition. Wish us luck, and a safe trip. Feel free to take a look at our last full scale launch video here:ROCKET VIDEO HERE!
Successful Test Launch!
March 24th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
In 15 seconds, the Frozen Fury Rocket hit an altitude of 5180ft by competition altimeter (5421ft by G-Wiz altimeter) !!!!
We had an flawless set up and launch this last Thursday before Easter weekend. Set up of the rocket took only 45minutes, including some down time while waiting for the altimeter batteries to be afixed. Loading the rocket onto the rail was nearly effortless. With the push of a button, our Frozen Fury Rocket, BLASTED into the atmosphere, delivering our payload to an altitude between 5180ft, and 5421ft. This was a total success, EXCEPT that the main parachute was deployed at apogee. We have not looked at the data yet, we have plans to do that on March 25th. We will then interpret the altimeter data to see if it was a pyro error, or too violent of a seperation, shocking the rocket into it's pieces too early.
Check out the VIDEO!!! Of the launch, right here:
Right click this link, and do "SAVE TARGET AS" to download it to your computer to view it. Thanks! ROCKET VIDEO HERE!
Construction Is Nearly Complete!
March 11th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
Things are Looking awesome, just take a look!
Construction of our competition rocket has been going fairly well! As you can see, it is nearly complete, some things that need to be finished are a few pyro charge cup holders, wiring holes for them, mounting the altimeters, and payloads, and final construction of our payload cradle. Otherwise, the rocket itself is being painted right now, primer has been applied, and soon enough we'll be smearing on an awe inspiring paint job! However, we have hit one snag, we are over weight, ALREADY, so we are looking into sizing up into a larger motor, hopefully this wont provided any additional problems. We are all back from our spring break, and are geared up for submitting our Flight Ready Review, and off to Huntsville Alabama for our competition on April 16th.
One thing mentioning is that there are TONS of new photos uploaded, AND videos! so go check them out in the pictures and videos section. Our design/Rocket/Payload sections have all been updated detailing each of those components. Even a bit on our rail we plan on constructing in the coming weeks. We have a FULL SCALE launch coming up towards the end of this month, we hope all goes well, for information on the launch if you would like to watch, please contact me:Matthew.Voigt@und.nodak.edu Enjoy
Public Lecture - From Ground to Space: Rocketry Through the Years
February 19th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
Come join us at our public lecture on Rocketry! 7:00pm CST in Witmer Hall Room 116
Download our .ppt of our lecture here! We have plans to upload a video of our actual presentation to such sites like youtube.com for further viewing. Stay tuned for that link in the next few days.
Download the Lecture Power Point Here
We will be having a lecture on Rocketry this Tuesday at Witmer Hall. The topics we will cover included: History of Rocketry, the Future of Rocketry, the Physics of Rocketry, Components of a general high powered rocket, Terminology, and the Current Rocketry Projects here in North Dakota. So come for a wonderful hour filled with pictures and videos!
We also had a fantastic outreach event with the girl scouts in an event called "Shoot For the Stars". For this event we put together a slide show similar to this one, and and did film canister rockets using water and Alka-Seltzer tablets to create a pressure in the film canister (upside down on the ground/table) and blasting up into the air. The girls were fantastic, they were cheering and counting up (haha!) to launch. It was fantastic! It was a great oppertunity for us to get comfortable with public speaking prior to this lecture, so we are prepared and excited! Look for some photos of the girlscout event to go up on the site in the near future.
Critial Design Review and PPT Ready to Download
January 28th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
here are the direct links to the files
Download the CDR here
Download the CDR PPT here
Scaled Launch Is A Success!
January 26th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
We are well on our way
See the rocket launch here taken from my personal camera from count down, to landing. Keep in mind this was a scaled launch up on an H-motor, and a small configuration then our final competition rocket.
We sure learned a lot in doing this, and we have a lot of ground to make up if we plan to be flawless at the competition. Regardless of the last minute "oops we forgot this" issues, we managed to meet, assemble, launch, and clean up all in four hours, including traveling! This is exciting for our next launch were we should be much more acustomed to launch day activities.
We will be making our final additions to the CDR tomorrow (Sunday) for it's submission on monday. Congrats team! I cannot wait for the next one!!!!
Scale Model Is nearly Complete!
January 17th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
Progress Report!
We have added a few photos, and more are coming! Keep checking the "pictures" section weekly for more pictures!
This is going to be a very busy set of months for the Frozen Fury team. Things on our plate that are coming up!
- We will being having a public lecture on Rocketry: From the Ground to Space, through the years on February 19th as apart of the Monthly Astronomy lectures put on by Dr. Barkhouse. More information on that soon
- "Shoot for the Stars" a colaboration with the Girl Scouts on February 16th
- Our Critical Design Review (CDR) due date is coming up quick, we are all very nervous about the CDR teleconferencing, and improving upon our PDR submitted just a month ago.
- Movie Night!!! This coming sunday, January 20th we will be getting together for some popcorn and a movie to watch either: "Sunshine", "October Sky". Last movie was "Apollo 13" (the Imax version, I don't recommend it, they cut a lot out!) and that was a lot of fun. See you all there!
- And finally, this coming weekend (weather permitting) we will be launching our scale rocket and doing some pryo ejection charge tests. It's going to be very cold, but it needs to be done. (Yea -20 degree weather here in North Dakota!)
Funding, and Updates Soon!
Updates Finished To Go Live This Weekend!
January 9th, 2008 by Matthew Voigt
Quick Note Here
It sounded from our meeting yesturday that everyone had a wonderful and safe break! Now it's time to get in gear and get to this competition. We have a lot to do on our plate, but from the sound of things in the meeting, everyone is ready to do their part. We are having two meetings thursday, one with the EERC to go over some finalized funding, meet the members we will be trading information with, and meet those that are interested. We also have a meeting over in the space studies department to discuss a more detailed proposal for additional funding from the North Dakota NASA Space Grant Consortium. So hopefully both those meetings go well! We will be building our prototype rocket this weekend, and the following week, to have a launch around January 19th - January 22nd. A few of our materials have been ordered, and are on their way, as well as the materials we already have. More notes to be posted later today, I have class!
Funding, and Updates Soon!
December 9th, 2007 by Matthew Voigt
A few, very short announcements
A number of things are still unlinked on the website, but they will be up as we progress with the remainder of the site. Check back often for updates, especially in the media section.
Funding letters have gone out, and we have one, very generous donation from the UND EERC and the team is very excited about this. Thank you!
A few more notes, the web pages for the sponsors, team member page, the rocket design, and photos are all nearly finished, we are waiting to put it all up as one large update to the site. With finals this week, it's unclear if it will happen this, or next. Check back often!
We had a successful outreach program with a High school rocketry team for TARC. We went over basic rocket components, and listened to their ideas for protecting their two hen eggs to an altitude of 750ft, and returning in 45seconds. We plan to have more meetings with them as time progresses, we'll show them our progress, and they'll show us theirs.
Perhaps even assist in building their rocket, or taking it over to the wind tunnel in the engineering department. A lot of ideas, we are very excited about all this!
A side note, a few of the team members got together this last friday night to celebrate, we watched Apollo 13 and ate popcorn. I think we'll be doing this more often. We even discussed using room 116 (or somewhere more comfortable) to watch our next movie in January.
Well, good luck to everyone on finals, and have a safe travel for this coming holiday break!
Introduction of Our New Site!
November 15th, 2007 by Matthew Voigt
Welcome to The University of North Dakota's - Frozen Fury website
Highlights of today's meeting:
- The University tech center secured our webspace for us, and gave us the required information to host up this site.
- Construction of the site began
- Will began looking for additional information on funding letter templates. Now that the website has been taking care of, this is a high priority.
- Due to Thanksgiving, we will not be holding a meeting next week, but please check your emails for any topics to be discussed over break, so that we can have a strong foothold on the program before the holiday break in December (and our dreaded finals!!)
- I'm looking into forumboard applications, however I do not know if it will work as intended. We may have to result to the use of blackboard.
- Team Members, please look over the site for any errors, and email me at: Matthew.Voigt@und.nodak.edu
