In the space business, even the best plans have the potential to become spectacular failures.
Air Force Academy cadets learned that lesson last week as they fired off handmade rockets at Fort Carson.
An 8-foot-tall machine named Colossus was supposed to fly as high as 15,000 feet before floating to the ground with a parachute. Colossus, though, had other plans, rocketing along a ballistic arc and smashing into the ground at near supersonic speed. The rocket’s creator smiled at the debris.
“No matter what, that was fun to watch,” senior cadet Dylan Juedeman said.
Col. Marty France, who heads the academy’s astronautics program, said the rocket club teaches cadets how difficult it can be to launch satellites.
“They learn that Murphy’s law holds,” France said. “In most cases, you only get one shot.”
More than a dozen cadets in the club helped build the rockets launched last week.
The solid-fuel-powered craft, larger than their cousins built by hobbyists, carried instrumented payloads to measure the rocket’s flight and environmental conditions. One sported an experimental parachute.
“Telemetry is a difficult task,” France said. “When you have real hardware integration on a rocket, it’s not as simple as it sounds.”
Most of the launches went off without a hitch.
“The hard part was getting the parachute right,” junior cadet Patrick O’Shea said as he readied his orange rocket for launch.
O’Shea’s parachute was designed to spin like a windmill, giving the rocket a straighter, softer landing. That’s a tall order for a rocket that tops out at more than 300 mph.
It proved its worth.
“It helps slow it down,” O’Shea said.
The rocket club returned this year after a budget-driven hiatus. Cadets used to build giant spacecraft, including one rocket that soared to 350,000 feet above White Sands Missile Range in 2009.
The club now has more modest ambitions, using commercially available motors and electronics to build more cost-effective rockets.
Club adviser Maj. Doug Kaupa said the budget for 2015’s rockets was $3,000.
“We’ve spent about $1,400,” he said. “That’s not too bad.”
The biggest of the rockets was Juedeman’s Colossus, which lifted off with instruments to record its flight.
The carefully built and artfully painted rocket ran into problems right after the countdown ended.
It rose from the launch pad and tilted as it accelerated.
One of the motors fired intermittently, adding to its wayward course.
As the rocket headed toward the ground, the parachute didn’t deploy. Colossus had a colossal impact nearly half a mile from its launch site, burying its nose cone into a Fort Carson training range as its carefully crafted parts turned into confetti.
Juedeman, though, said you can learn more from failure than success in the world of spaceflight.
He spotted the trouble during the rocket’s flight and quickly diagnosed it.
“We have to figure out a better way to ignite two motors at once,” he said. And learning by doing is what the rocket club is about. “That’s why we launch,” he said.
