Rocket Propulsion Group on a Mission UNDERGRADS AIM TO MAKE BU THE FIRST UNIVERSITY TO LAUNCH A ROCKET INTO SPACE
W
orking long hours in the basement of 110 Cummington Mall, the Boston University Rocket Propulsion Group’s (BURPG) 35 undergraduates—33 from the College of Engineering, one from the College of Arts & Sciences and one from the College of Communication—are designing, building, testing and publicizing Starscraper, a 30-foot-long, 12-inch-diameter rocket designed to propel a 100-pound payload into space and land it safely back on Earth. Assembly and testing is planned for the Spring 2015 semester, with a tentative launch date in July in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. If all goes well, Starscraper will be the first university-based rocket to breach 10
BU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
the 100-kilometer altitude Kármán Line, commonly regarded as the border between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. BURPG will also become the first nongovernmental and non-corporate entity to do so using a hybrid propulsion system, in which solid fuel reacts with a liquid oxidizer— a combustive mix that provides sufficient thrust to get the rocket off the ground. The current BU system consists of a six-segment structure made of tire rubber (the solid fuel) and a tank of nitrous oxide (the liquid oxidizer), commonly used to sedate dental patients. Its payload will include a GPS tracking system, but future versions could carry everything from telescopes to drug manufacturing experiments into space.
An amateur rocket enthusiast who launched several small-scale rockets before he arrived at Boston University, Armor Harris (ME’15) wowed the judges at the College of Engineering’s first Imagineering Contest with a sounding rocket designed to reach a 100,000-feet altitude that he had partially built in the Imagineering Lab. In many ways, Starscraper is a follow-up to this achievement and the capstone of three years helming the BURPG. Funded in part by GE, Raytheon, FloDesign and SpaceX, and donations through the ENG Annual Fund and the group’s own Kickstarter crowdfunding site, the BURPG rocket is about 10 times cheaper to develop than a comparable NASA hybrid rocket. Several BURPG members have netted internships or job offers from the three corporate sponsors and other companies in the spaceflight industry, including Harris, who is on his second internship as a propulsion development engineer with SpaceX. More importantly, participants are gaining invaluable experience in hands-on engineering, building a solid foundation for their entire careers. “In the classroom, students can learn how to derive Bernoulli’s equation (which governs fluid flow in pipes), but down here they can build a high-pressure fluid system,” said Harris. “The real value of this mission is that it can serve as a model for engineering education in which students apply theoretical concepts as they learn how to design, build, test and integrate components of a working system.” follow the bu rocket propulsion group’s progress on this mission at burocket.org.
PHOTOGRAPH BY PAT GREENHOUSE/BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY IMAGES (TOP)
clockwise from top: Members of the BU Rocket Propulsion Group test fire a stationary rocket motor/engine. Armor Harris (ME’15) measuring components during fabrication of the oxidizer tank for Starscraper. Doug Lescarbeau (ME’18), Tom Halstead (ME’16), Joe Beaupre (EE’17) and Jarrod Risley (ME’17) pose with the Active Stabilization Test Rocket, used to test the control system that will guide Starscraper into space.