mailbag Rocket Science
Literary Enthusiasts Abound
The article on the “Rocketeers of Troy” (Spring 2012, p. 24) made me wish I was still at USC! I used to make two-stage rockets when I was in boarding school in France around 1969 using fertilizer as fuel (to the dismay of school management). They reached 300-400 feet and had parachute recovery. Would the students have a website showing their launches live with GPS data in the telemetry? Philip de Louraille ’82, MS ’84 L O S G AT O S, C A
USC senior Bill Murray from the Rocket Lab replies: We continually update our website, uscrpl.com, with the latest flight data, but transmitting this data live to the Internet from the remote desert where we launch our rockets is a bit of a financial and technical hurdle. We are trying to perfect our ability to transmit live data from the vehicle to a laptop on the ground. Once we become proficient in doing this, it would be a simple step to move this data to our website.
FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW, USC HOSTED THE LARGEST public literary festival in America on April 21-22. The 17th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books attracted a record-breaking 151,000 book lovers of all stripes to the University Park campus, an 8 percent increase over 2011’s attendance. More than 400 authors – including many Trojans – gave readings, appeared on panels and signed their books. Highlights also included the unveiling of a new U.S. postage stamp honoring major 20th-century American poets, the USC Health Pavilion with demonstrations and health screenings, and the collection of 8,000 books for USC Civic Engagement’s annual book drive – more than double last year’s donations.
During WWII, I was in the Navy V-12 program at the USC College of Engineering [now USC Viterbi School of Engineering]. At my first engineering job at North American Aviation’s Aerophysics Laboratory in 1946, I evaluated the German V-2 liquid rocket engine. I went on to supervise the preliminary design of the largest liquid rocket engine ever built: Rocketdyne’s F-1, which launched each of the Apollo program’s Saturn V rockets to the moon. Later I worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on [NASA’s Mars exploration missions] Mariner, Viking and Voyager. Nothing in the USC curricula in my day suggested I would be prepared for such a career, yet the engineering basics I learned helped me make important contributions to rocket and space achievements. How fortunate these new rocketeers are to be able to build upon those and many other remarkable feats. Robert P. Thompson ’45
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I applaud all the young men and women who have achieved so much already. I only wish this laboratory had existed when I was in school. I know their success will continue and make us all proud to be Trojans! Alan E. Zoller ’87 D AY T O N , O H
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U S C T R O JA N FA M I LY M AG A Z I N E
summer 2012
PHOTO BY DIETMAR QUISTORF
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, CA