Blog - Page 2 of 7 - Castle Point Rocketry

The Faces of Castle Point Rocketry

July 12, 2019June 5, 2020
by Dakota

It’s high time we re-introduce everyone who makes up this team. After all, once we test this thing and get our big media break, you’ll want to know who we all are.

Team Members

A core group of eight have been with this project since the beginning. We have four Mechanical Engineers (ME), two Chemical Engineers (CHE), one Computer Engineer (CPE), and one Computer Scientist (CS). Pictures and short blurbs below.

Abraham Edens (ME)
Thomas Flaherty (ME)
Faris Ibrahim (CPE)

Abe is our Aerodynamic Design and Mathematics Specialist. He helped solve the regenerative heating problem and worked with Tom and Will on many manufacturing tasks.

Tom also specializes in computer-aided design (CAD). He spent innunerable hours modeling an injector to Monica’s and Dakota’s specifications before tackling other projects.

Faris, working on Electronics, Signals, and Avionics, was integral to designing the team’s circuit boards and developing how those systems fit into the rocket.

Unfortunately, Abe, Tom, and Faris are unable to join the other members of the team for testing. However, we are still very proud to call them members of the Castle Point Rocketry team — we couldn’t have done it without them!

Benjamin Iofel (CS)
William Skwirut (ME)
Nathan Tahbaz (ME)

Ben is Lead Programmer, meaning he has literally written the code for our testing procedure. Recently, Ben has also branched out to become our resident electronic hardware expert.

Will is formally the Machining Specialist, but he has extensive knowledge of (and a quippy remark for) for nearly every facet of the project. He also played a large role in designing the plumbing system.

Nathan is the true Renaissance Man of the group. As Team Lead, it’s his job to ensure every subsystem is stitched together — on top of serving as Point of Contact for purchasing and inquiries.

Monica Traupmann (CHE)
Dakota Van Deursen (CHE)

Monica and Dakota, Propulsion Specialists, collaborate to fill our propulsion and PR needs.

Monica, who is also our Safety Officer, designed our plumbing system with Will and Dakota, manages our social media presence, and interfaces with many of our top donors. Dakota mainly focused on the engine, but he also manages the project’s blogs and attends to the tasks that fall in the ever-present gray areas.

Ben, Will, Nathan, Monica, and Dakota are all on site for this week’s testing procedures.

Team Volunteers

As you may have noticed around campus and online, Castle Point Rocketry has put out a call for volunteers. Two excited Stevens students have come to our aid, and we are very grateful!

Daniel Cooke, Avionics and Telemetry
Rodrigo Nogueira, Fabrication

Rodrigo is a graduate student in ME who joined us in early February. His extensive background in fabrication and manufacturing have come in handy many a late night.

Dan, a rising junior in CPE, joined us at the beginning of the summer. He has been a great help to Ben in preparing our electronic systems for integration and testing.

Rodrigo is on site for this week’s testing procedure, and Dan may be coming down over the weekend.

Industry Advisors

We are also lucky to have had the input of two professional aerospace engineers. Rich Kelly from Valcor Engineering and Luke Colby from Triton Space Technologies have thankfully withstood a barrage of phone calls and emails from the team.

Luke (back row, middle) and Rich (back row, second from right) visiting the team in Hoboken.

Rich and Luke are both on site for this week’s testing procedures.

News

Testing: Days 0 – 2

July 12, 2019June 5, 2020
by Dakota

These last three days were dominated by the minutiae associated with launching a rocket. Sure, we did as much setup as possible beforehand. But there’s much more to do once the rocket actually gets here.

Day Zero: Packing Up

Tuesday, July 9, was particularly chaotic. Myriad administrative snafus demanded quick action from the whole team. Dakota grabbed a truck so we could transport our rocket. And, most pressingly, we needed to move everything out of our Griffith work space and go mobile.

Monica, Nathan, Ben, Dan, Will, and Dakota (behind camera) take a breather after lifting our rocket onto the dolly. More straps and plastic wrap were added to further reduce movement.

Due to everything else going on, we didn’t even get around to packing until 6:00pm. By that point, we knew we would be leaving late, but we hoped 1:00am would be the limit. Yet 1:00am came and went.

At 2:30am, we gently loaded the rocket into the truck. (Lift gates are a blessing.) It took all of the remaining six of us, but it happened without a snag. Come 4:00am, we were practically finished.

Our lab and rocket, all crammed into one 26′ box truck.

The lab looked lived in, but at least it was devoid of much our mess. And what better time than 4:00am to start 2.5 hours of highway truck driving?

Day One: Tying It All Together

Dakota scrambled into the driver’s seat. Ben and Rodrigo piled in and kept him company to Salem County. (And kept him awake.) After all, there’s that old saying: “Six eyes are better than two with a $500,000 rocket and boxed-up laboratory in tow.”

They arrived okay — and just in time to volley off the first round of calls to gas/cryogenic companies to confirm our delivery schedule. Starting at 8:00am on the dot, Dakota, Will, and Nathan were on the phone until noon. Then, it was just a matter of waiting for the team to assemble.

The shed at left will store our chemicals. Ground control is barely off-screen to the right. The test site is 2,000 feet behind the camera.

A brief team meeting preceded driving to the test site and setting up ground control. The remaining daylight hours were swallowed up by running 2,000 feet of fiber optic cable and cleaning out the on-site shed for our chemical deliveries.

Day Two: Finishing Touches

It took a little under 14 months, but it’s finally happened — Castle Point Rocketry has received a shipment of rocket propellant. (The oxidizing half, at least.) Shortly after a late start to the day, the first cryogen delivery came through: liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen. It’s a good thing we got that shed cleaned out!

For the rest of the day, we split up into small project teams. The test stand was bent and needed a quick weld — Rodrigo made short work of it. Over the weekend, the gantry hoist slipped on the muddy ground. We righted and reinforced it. Ben and Nathan focused on getting the avionics and valves attached and laid out.

CP Rocketry Test Site, featuring the Mayor’s Soy Beans

Though all parts of plumbing were screwed together, Will and Monica still had some tightening to do. They spent most of the day in the truck-lab working on the rocket. Dakota manned the ground control station, where there is WiFi and a view of the road, to finish up some remaining purchases and administrative duties.

The inside of our truck-turned-lab. (There are no chemicals stored inside.)

When interrupted by a small storm, we broke for lunch. Then, after three more hours in the sun, a massive thunderstorm rumbled in from Delaware. We took it as our cue to leave before it got dark out — but not without first getting absolutely drenched.

What’s Left

We’re zooming in on the first day of true testing. It’s highly likely that, after a delivery Friday morning, we will be testing Friday afternoon. In the meantime, the team still has a short laundry list of tasks to accomplish. First and foremost, we need to reestablish ground control. It kinda tipped over in the rain, and we had to rescue it.

Stay tuned to our Facebook page for a live feed of testing. (Or the live feed itself.)

News

Full Stack

July 11, 2019June 5, 2020
by Nate

“Full stack” is our tech jargon for a complete system. We refer to the entire, fully-assembled rocket as the full stack. All subsystems, including structural, propulsion, avionics, and recovery, are finally together. That means every component required to turn the rocket on is integrated, meticulously cleaned, carefully installed according to the design specifications, and painstakingly checked to make sure it functions in the whole system.

Adding a few final touches to the piping and wiring.

You’ve seen quite a few photos of our full stack flooding our social media over the last few days.* We’ve finally been able to get some good angles of it now that it is out of the clean room. (All of the components required to be clean have been capped.) Additionally, we have received our final engine, and our valves have been plumbed in. With the addition of these last pieces, our rocket has bones, some muscle, and a fully-developed digestive system!

Its taken an incredible amount of effort (and a remarkable number of late nights), but the team now has the full stack at our testing site in southern New Jersey. We are confident the rocket (as pictured below) will perform optimally when tested!

Our rocket, on its dolly, in our Hoboken lab space.

*Note: What we refer to as the “full stack” for testing is different than the “full stack” we will use for launch. In order to launch, we will first need to add on three more major components. (1) The carbon fiber “skin” of the rocket. (2) The machined titanium fins for the rocket’s “feet.” (3) The manufactured nose cone at the “head” of the rocket.

News

Ready to Test

July 9, 2019June 5, 2020
by Dakota

Here we go. The last fourteen months of work have all come down to this: testing. Over the last two weeks, we have traveled back and forth from South Jersey to inspect the site, set up infrastructure, and clear the area.

In the next 6 days, Castle Point Rocketry will be pursuing a rigorous testing schedule. The testing procedure is 65 pages… But what all will we be doing?

You’ll be able to follow along on live streams that we post to our social media pages. In case you’re still curious what we’re doing along the way, here’s a short explanation.

Phase One: Tank Testing

The first set of tests caters specifically to our experimental liquid oxygen (LOX) tank from Infinite Composites Technologies. Though the composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) is theoretically capable of handing pure oxygen at such cold temperatures and high pressure, we want to test it to be absolutely positive. That way, if we notice any problems, we can stop everything before we have it inside our rocket.

Our Tank Testing series consists of three tests. TT.01: COPV Cryogen Validation proves the tank can withstand cryogens at high pressure. (A gas is “cryogenic” if it can be turned into a liquid below -240°F .) Then, TT.02: COPV LOX Compatibility Validation and TT.03: COPV Cryogenic Pressure Validation step into chemical compatibility with LOX and a system at full pressure.

Phase Two: Full Stack Testing

The second set of tests is more complicated and involves more subsystems. Rather than just the LOX tank and its assorted plumbing, the next five tests incorporate the whole rocket — but don’t let it leave the ground. Computer, mechanical, and chemical systems all interact with one another to give the team an idea of the rocket’s performance.

Similar to the Tank Testing procedures, FST.01: Full Stack Pressurization Test and FST.02: Cold Flow Test simply ensure that everything can withstand operational temperature and pressure. Then, we introduce fire.

FST.03: Ignition Sequence Test is expected to be the longest test Castle Point Rocketry will perform. It is a critical juncture of the project, for limiting the time between when chemicals flow and when the engine ignites will conserve precious fuel and help us make it to the Karman Line. FST.04: Hot Abort Sequence Test then double-checks that, once turned on, we can turn it off as necessary.

Finally, the grand finale. FST.05: Full Stack Hot Fire Test. This test will be the most exciting, the most relieving, and the most Instagram-able. (So we’ve left room for it to happen twice.) Picture a rocket — without its nose or tail — strapped to the ground, straining upwards under full thrust. This test is essential not only to prove we can launch, but also to fully grasp the efficiency of our engine.

What Then?

And then, well, we pack up and go home. We’ll have a truck to return, a rocket to clean, and some data to send off to interested parties. Not to mention, we’ll be so ecstatic we probably won’t sleep for three days. (Or, alternatively, so ecstatic we will sleep for three days.) We have the future of this project to look forward to — including a launch looming in the near future.

News

More New Lab Space!

July 2, 2019June 5, 2020
by Dakota

Last week was a rather exciting time. Not only did we set up for testing, we moved our lab — twice. And all within four days.

Stevens is modernizing and expanding, so there are plenty of active construction sites around campus. You may remember that Castle Point Rocketry’s lab space in Griffith is right next to one. That’s why we had to move two months back. Early last week, we were notified of that construction zone needing to overtake our lab space for some finishing touches. We had to be out by Friday. So, we were offered another space in the basement of the Burchard Building.

The old machine shop in the basement of Burchard, after the first round of cleaning.

We went to look at the space. 200 extra square feet made the move enticing, but there was a lot of work that needed to be done. The school’s machine shop occupied this space for many years, so there were rust marks, flaky paint, and a fine layer of metal dust on every surface.

The team spent three nights up until 2:00am refinishing the room. We washed the walls. The floors were swept, vacuumed, rinsed, scrubbed, revacuumed, and squeegeed. We brought tables up and wrapped compressed air hoses up into the ceiling. Finally, it looked appropriate for our use.

Almost done cleaning — and our clean room up in the back.

The final play before moving all of our tools and rocket parts up was to set up the clean room. After all, bringing clean parts up from Griffith just to lay them on the floor of an old machine shop isn’t the best plan. Thursday night found Nathan and Dakota laying thick plastic siding and flooring, with Will and Tom adding a vestibule. We called it a night and headed out.

Friday morning, we visited another construction site — the one just outside Burchard. We wanted to use the rental truck to move our lab up all in one go, but needed permission first. In a whirlwind couple of hours, we found out that room was already promised to someone else… So our clean room was torn down, the tables were removed, and we skedaddled back down to Griffith.

And here we’ll stay for at least two more weeks. Sure, the excitement of new lab space was fleeting, but we won’t complain. No one can, with this view!

Home sweet home. Great for getting those creative juices flowing.

News

On the Road

July 2, 2019June 5, 2020
by Dakota

Castle Point Rocketry took its first official road trip. Destination: South Jersey.

The team packed up some supplies and drove to our proposed test site in southern New Jersey. Our goal was to survey the land, set up our test apparatus, and make sure our testing plan is viable. It only took us 27 hours, round-trip!

Our truck pulling out of campus — laden with test setup materials.

By far, the most difficult part of the journey was getting out of Hoboken. After the initial burden of getting through NYC metro traffic, though, the going was easy. Will, Nathan, Monica, Rodrigo, Dakota, and Tom made the 2.5-hour trek to our testing site and spent the night. Then, a full day in the sun lay ahead of us!

(Quick recap: The duckbill earth anchors keep everything on the ground so that we can measure thrust while the rocket engine fires. The gantry hoist pulls the truss upright.) While Will and Rodrigo focused on the logistics of securing our duckbill earth anchors into the ground, Tom and Dakota refinished the gantry hoist. The entire apparatus (test stand, gantry hoist, and trusses) was then laid our for placement and inspection. Luckily, we passed our own muster.

L-R: Our rental truck, the gantry hoist, the test stand, the truss, and a (unused) backhoe.

We were displeased when the evening’s forecasted rain came three hours early. That’s three untapped hours of perfectly good productivity! We securely wrapped all permanent features in tarps, then loaded up the truck before calling it a day.

Despite the early departure, we are happy with the day’s events. Among other things, we verified the land will suit our full stack testing and confirmed that our duckbill anchors need no doctoring for added support. And, just like that, the road trip was over. We skedaddled back to our Hoboken HQ to unpack and prepare for another full week of rocket science.

Uncategorized

Dolly Upgrade!

June 25, 2019June 5, 2020
by Nate

Initially, we built a dolly out of 80/20 aluminum to wheel about the rocket. This dolly proved to be too short as our rocket got longer. So, we decided on an upgrade — wood! This new dolly is double the length of the previous.

Abe fills the new dolly’s tires with more air so it works extra-well.

Over time, our rocket has only gotten longer. (At least, after it’s initial shortening when we moved from a two-stage system to a one-stage system.) Our rocket is around 25 feet long. This dolly will be used to transport it around the test and launch sites.

News

“Always Open”

June 24, 2019June 5, 2020
by Dakota

Those of you who follow us on Facebook may have noticed a quirk. Under the “About” section, just under the map of Hoboken, it says “Always Open.” This is no mistake.

Here’s a little peek into what we’ve been up to this weekend — at all hours of the day.

Tank Cleaning

As you may recall from a few weeks back, the vast majority of our propulsion system needs to be “Clean for Oxygen Use.” We have finished pipes, fittings, and adapters and are onto the bigger pieces: our tanks.

The helium and oxygen tanks we use were made special for us by Infinite Composites Technologies. We are rigorously cleaning both with isopropyl alcohol baths to dislodge any remaining construction materials from the inside.

Since the alcohol coming out is dirty, we also needed to clean it for reuse — about 34 liters (9 gallons) worth. Monica and Dakota spent much of Saturday vacuum filtering all 34 liters.

The process of vacuum filtration. Dirty isopropyl in the top, clean out the bottom.
We changed filters once every 2 liters — about when they started to look like this.

Load Cell Calibration

A by-product of last weekend’s Dry Run Mechanical Test, we are confirming all of our load cells work. In order to accurately measure the thrust of the rocket, we will attach it to the ground with cables. These cables will pull on our load cells, which tell us how much thrust the rocket has.

Ben was hard at work making sure the code was solid while Will used the engine hoist to test a few known loads.

Will’s load cell testing apparatus.
Ben working on code — as seen through the clean room walls.

Now that it’s Monday, Will, Tom, and Abe are out on Walker Lawn with the load cells and duck bill anchors. The anchors are being used to test the load cells, and vice versa. We want to make sure our duck bill anchors are rated properly. After all, the last thing we would want is for an anchor to come out of the ground during a test.

Fitting Tightening

Last but not least, we have our piping. As mentioned above, all of the propulsion subassemblies have been cleaned for oxygen use. Now, it’s just a matter of preparing them for testing and launch.

Our propulsion system has threaded joints from two rival piping standards: JIC (Joint Industry Council) and NPT (National Pipe Tapered). Each of these two standards comes in multiple sizes — and each size requires a unique tightening force. Larger threads require greater tightening force — as much as 100 foot-pounds.

Nathan and Will using two wrenches and a vise to tighten a JIC-12 fitting to specification.

In order to accurately tighten each joint, we use both a torque wrench and a crescent wrench. (One to twist, one to hold the rest of the subassembly.) For some subassemblies, more advanced methods are needed, though. In the case of particularly wiggly or oddly-shaped pieces, a vise is necessary to get a good grip. Thus the above picture outside the clean room — as long as the interior is not compromised, the outside of the subassembly can always be cleaned again.

A Little Fun

We also manage to have a little fun after a long day’s work. (And usually right before another long night’s work.) Friday night, we all stepped outside to enjoy a barbecue dinner. Because how else would we ring in the first day of summer?