PROJECT SUMMARY

Poise was the sophomore design project of the 2018-2019 sophomore class. The project consisted of a static fire and 6” diameter vehicle with an apogee of 31,090 feet. As a design project, Poise was not going for an altitude record, rather it served as a test-bed for a handful of new R&D projects at a relatively smaller scale. While the static fire occurred in April of 2019, the vehicle launch slipped into the 2019-2020 school-year due to the numerous design changes being tested. Compared to our proven technologies on Traveler IV, Poise featured the following new innovations:

• A new “extrudable” propellant formula that is less viscous than RPL’s previous formula. This will serve for easier manufacturing of motor grains.

• A 2-part recovery system, where the rocket body and nosecone each have independent parachute systems. This is predicted to result in a smoother descent and minimise damage to the vehicle on descent.

• An additional, isolated avionics component called the “black box” placed in the camera bay. The black box contained a high-grade IMU in order to supplement avionics’ existing IMU and gyroscope data and increase precision and certainty when calculating apogee and flight path.

• The nozzle was made entirely of carbon phenolic, without a graphite insert at the throat. This drastically simplifies the nozzle manufacturing process while having very little predicted impact on the flight.

VEHICLE LAUNCH

Poise was launched out of the Mojave Test Area on January 24, 2020. The new nozzle and propellant performed very well, however the dual-deployment recovery system did not function as planned. The parachute cords became tangled, causing the nosecone’s parachute to only partially deploy. The case’s parachute was entirely severed. The nosecone was recovered, undamaged, and avionics data analysed to determine an apogee of 31,090 ft. This was incredibly close to the estimation made by our simulations team. As the case’s tracking unit was mounted in the parachute, the case was lost, along with the GoPro cameras and Black Box IMU inside.

STATIC FIRE