Oakton High School

Critical Design Review

Presentation
STABILITY

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 Mission Statement and Presentation
Outline
Mission Statement:
Oakton High School’s Student Launch team’s mission is to
design, construct, and fly a dual deployment rocket to the
Outline:
proposed altitude with safe recovery. Mission success will also
be dependent on successful collection of data from the Slide 3 - Vehicle
experiment. The program will also be used to ensure
continued interest in STEM from the community, through
numerous outreach programs. The mission criteria for this Slide 17 - Safety
project is the following parameters: stable accent, successful
deployment of both parachutes, no ballistic reentry,
successful recovery, reusability within two hours, nominal
Slide 19 - Payload
payload performance, successful data recovery, and successful
engagement of the community in the program. Slide 24 - Project Plan

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Vehicle

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Final Launch Vehicle Dimensions

Length 90.308”

Mass 4412 g

Nose Cone 19.808”

Forward Parachute Compartment 26”

Electronics Bay 6”

Booster 38”

Fins ¼ Baltic Birch Plywood

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Key Design Features
● The vehicle is 4” diameter, dual deployment, single-stage rocket
● Consisting of 4 sections:
● The nose cone
● Forward parachute compartment
● Payload & electronics bay
● Propulsion section.

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Separation Points and Energetic
Locations

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Final Motor Choice
The primary motor selected is a
K550W motor. With an average
thrust of 369.8 N, this motor
provided the ideal amount of
thrust to reach the target
altitude of 5280 ft.

Thrust to weight ratio: 15.34

Rail exit velocity: 104.7 ft/s

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Rocket Flight Stability
● The stability margin on
the launch pad is 2.21
● At rail exit velocity, the
stability margin is 2.3

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Mass Statement and Mass Margin
● The mass of the vehicle with the motor as it sits on the launch is 4412 g. This includes 200 g
(approximately 7 percent of vehicle mass) added to accomodate for mass growth.
● Currently zero ballast has been added which creates some leeway for curbing altitude if
necessary.

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Parachute sizes, recovery harness type, size
length, and descent rates
Drogue Parachute 18”

Main Parachute 64”

Recovery Harness 20 ft of ¼ Tubular Kevlar and

Nylon Recovery Harness

Descent Rates 19.7 fps

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 Kinetic Energy at
Key Phases

Section Weight (lbs) KE (ft-lbf)

Nose cone 0.55 3.32

Forward Parachute Compartment .21 1.29

Electronics Bay 1.37 8.35

Booster 2.34 14.2

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Predicted drift from launch pad

0 mph 5 mph 10 mph 15 mph 20 mph

0° 0 ft 374.26 ft 794.91 ft 1240.49 ft 1704.93 ft

5° 740.42 ft. 1116.88 ft 1540.24 ft 1989.14 ft 2458.11 ft

10° 1453.68 ft 1836.89 ft 2265.94 ft 2722.14 ft 3198.65 ft

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Tests of staged recovery system
● Scaling factor .5
● Based on the subscale launch, we
determined that the drag coefficient is
approximately .75, which yields a lower
altitude than Rocksim projected

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Safety

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Test plan and procedures
● A safety checklist has been implemented and improved with lessons from the subscale
○ This checklist covers all launch day activities
● Safe procedures will be implemented in any tests that are conducted

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Payload

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Final Payload Design Overview

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Payload retention system

● Screws to secure Payload,

Battery Holders
● Pins will keep breakout
boards in place

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Payload Interfaces
● Screw Switch
● LED indicators
● Ground Station/Radio communication
● Manual Programming/booting

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Testing
● Development Testing
○ Step by step
○ Making sure that the parts are assembled correctly as we add more
● Full Testing Suite
○ Testing capabilities of the payload
○ What can be improved later in the development cycle?
● Launch Site Testing
○ Checking for bugs and faulty components before launch
○ Make sure that critical components like the batteries are functioning properly

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Business

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Status of Requirements Verification
● Team successfully finished the design phase under all the requirements set for the vehicle,
recovery, and payload.
● Currently team is getting the proper parts to build the rocket under all the requirement
compliance.
● After team gets their parts from numerous vendors, we will build a full scale that fulfills all the
requirements.

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