Congratulations to the University of Minnesota Rocket Team - Update

[Unregistered User]

The 2023 Spaceport America Cup was held last week.

The U brought home first place in the category of SRAD 30K. SRAD stands for Student Researched and Designed, so they completely design and build their engines, vs COTS or Consumer Off The Shelf competitors.

They also came home with the James Barrowman Award for Flight Dynamics. This award goes to the team who gets closest to their simulated apogee. The U's team simulated apogee was 29,500 feet, and they achieved 29,447 feet, or .18% of simulated apogee. The 2nd place team was about 2.2%.

This is an international competition with 158 teams. 80 colleges and universities from the US and 78 others representing every continent except Antarctica. Teams came from: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Nepal, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey Ukraine, UAE and the UK.

This is their 3rd category win in the past 4 competitions, only marred by a 4th place in last year's SA Cup.

Incredibly impressive program.

 

[Spaulding!No!]

The 2023 Spaceport America Cup was held last week.

The U brought home first place in the category of SRAD 30K. SRAD stands for Student Researched and Designed, so they completely design and build their engines, vs COTS or Consumer Off The Shelf competitors.

They also came home with the James Barrowman Award for Flight Dynamics. This award goes to the team who gets closest to their simulated apogee. The U's team simulated apogee was 29,500 feet, and they achieved 29,447 feet, or .18% of simulated apogee. The 2nd place team was about 2.2%.

This is an international competition with 158 teams. 80 colleges and universities from the US and 78 others representing every continent except Antarctica. Teams came from: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Nepal, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey Ukraine, UAE and the UK.

This is their 3rd category win in the past 4 competitions, only marred by a 4th place in last year's SA Cup.

Incredibly impressive program.

I’ll hear about this from AE grad friends this fall.

 

[Wally]

A couple years ago I went to a high power rocket meet, up by North Branch, those things are crazy...

 

[Unregistered User]

A couple years ago I went to a high power rocket meet, up by North Branch, those things are crazy...

They do that once a month, year round, weather permitting.

Just to give you an idea between that and the competition they just won, the rockets launched in North Branch are either A or B motors. B is twice as powerful as A, C is twice as powerful as B, etc.

An "A" motor is capable of a total impulse of 1.26 - 2.50 Newtons.

The newton is the unit of force in the International System of Units. It is defined as 1 kg⋅m/s2, the force which gives a mass of 1 kilogram an acceleration of 1 meter per second per second. According to Wiki.

The "U" launched an "O" motor, capable of a thrust of 20,480.01 - 40,960 newtons. Crazy to me.