Fall 2019 Update
December 19, 2019
This fall semester was an unusually busy one, with a lot happening even outside of rocketry. This post will cover as much of that as I can, and ultimately, it was a solid final fall semester both of grad school, and also at OSU.
Things got started off with LDRS, covered here in a previous post, and after that, I got settled into the semester’s coursework. I was enrolled in 2 undergraduate classes for graduate credit: Experimental Fluid Dynamics and Mechanical Metallurgy. My advisor and I felt these would be the most applicable classes to my research and thesis topics. Ironically enough, taking these two undergrad courses would result in the most challenging course load of grad school yet.
Experimental Fluids consisted not only of homework, quizzes, and exams, but also 3 hands-on labs with extensive lab reports, and a semester-long group project that for me dealt with swimming motions of Antarctic krill (not exactly related to my research of 3D-printed, water-cooled rocket nozzles). The first two labs studied flow velocity profiles within OSU’s new Endeavor wind tunnel, and the third was boundary layer particle image velocimetry (PIV) inside a water tunnel. All the work towards this class was very time consuming, with the third and final laboratory experiment on PIV taking something like 60+ hours of data acquisition, analysis, and report writing. You can check out the reports here: Lab 1 Report, Lab 2 Report, and Lab 3 Report. The krill project didn’t work out too great, because we struggled to design a good test setup that could read drag forces on the order of millinewtons. You can read our report on that here.
Metallurgy wasn’t too difficult, and I learned a lot from the hands-on lab (yes, lab experiments and reports for both classes this semester), but with that and Experimental Fluids, little to no time was left over to work on my thesis. I was also fortunate that TA and RA duties were light during these months. I was one of 4 TAs for my advisor’s undergraduate Aerospace Propulsion and Power course, so aside from grading, the main task was designing a new rocket laboratory experiment for the students, essentially designing an assignment from scratch. I ended up casting over a dozen 54mm propellant grains from potassium nitrate-sorbitol propellant (KNSB) and fired 6 research J motors which was a lot of fun.
Summarily, the course load was too heavy to get much done outside of the 2 classes, so I’m not as far along with my thesis as I would like. Nonetheless, it worked out, still clinching a 4.0 GPA to maintain my 4.0 overall in grad school, and I still feel I’m in a good position for utilizing my final semester to complete my thesis and round out my graduate studies at OSU this spring.
Moving on from schoolwork to rockets: I attended 2 more launches after LDRS in October and November. For the Kloudbuster’s October Fun Fly I went up on my own to camp Saturday night, cooking chili and cornbread on the camp stove, and sleeping just shy of 12 hours that night. I flew my first mid-power rocket three times in the span of about 90 minutes on an F27R, E23T, and F22J which was actually really fun because there was almost no risk to losing it, unlike the high-power rockets I usually fly that represent hours of work and testing with hundreds of dollars of personal investment. I also launched the sustainer of my multistage on a J350W. I intended to do that launch on the last day of LDRS, but I didn’t recover that part of the rocket until hours before the event ended. That flight was cool because it pulled 25Gs and went 0-500mph in 2 seconds on its way up to 5500ft (1677m).
At Distant Thunder in early November, we completed another launch for Honeywell as part of our contract to fly payloads for them. We got TestArticle_FlightConfig_RevA ready on another N5800 and launched to 13276ft (4046m). Getting out to the pad was stressful as the traffic on the away pad reached a bottleneck, but we launched about 15 minutes before the payload batteries were expected to die. No issues with the flight other than a bulge near the forward seal disc of the CTI 6G-XL casing.
This pad picture was also cool because 4 years ago, I was flying rockets that were a little bit smaller.
With the semester as busy at it was, I didn’t have nearly as much time to daydream about rockets like I usually do. I also told myself I wouldn’t buy any more rocket stuff (TeleMetrum, TeleDongle, antenna, LDRS motors were all expensive this year), so I think that’s why rockets weren’t on my mind as much as usual. I did get to do a lot of KNSB research motors though, so that also counts for something. I hope my interest will pick back up with the new year.
Beyond school and rockets, Sam and I attended a couple concerts, seeing Barns Courtney (2nd time) and The Hunna at House of Blues in Dallas. We also saw lovelytheband and Twin XL in OKC a few weeks later. I’m saving more of the exciting news here for the end because in November, Sam and I also adopted a dog! Her name is Kenzie, and she’s a year-old Great Pyrenees mix. She has been so chill so far and set the bar for a new dog very high. She was quite shy at first, but she’s warming up to us more each week. She loves playing with other dogs, meeting new people, and laying on the sofa sleeping most of the day. On the flipside, she does not like the vacuum cleaner or our electric toothbrushes.
Despite the busy semester, I did pick up a new hobby in the past few months. My dad was a big tennis player growing up, and he still has a lot of interest for the sport. He instructed me throughout my childhood to learn the basics, and while we always would hit a few times a year throughout my whole upbringing, I never pursued it, since I liked swimming better. Well after 5 years of swimming and water polo in college with the OSU clubs, most of my friends had graduated or quit, and I didn’t feel much of a draw to continue with either during this final year of grad school. I decided to give the OSU tennis club a try and see how I liked it. Turns out I love tennis, and I really wish I had given it a chance earlier. Things with the club went quite well, but I decided not to tell my dad about it, in case I couldn’t stick with it or I lost interest later. The more I played, the harder it was to keep it a secret. I went to play in duals against OU and University of Tulsa, and I played with a league in Stillwater on Wednesday nights. I was having a blast, and over Thanksgiving when I returned home for the holiday, I casually asked my dad if he wanted to go play. I stashed by racket and court shoes in the car before we left to go hit, and after 15 minutes on the court, all he said was, “Lucas, usually I can point out things for you to work on, but today, I have nothing to say.” I went on to finally share with him my big secret and then got my racket and court shoes from the car. He was dumbfounded and then overjoyed. It’s been great to finally talk about all of this, and I think he’s enjoyed being able to play more advanced tennis with me.
Finally, and this is perhaps the biggest piece of news from the semester, is that I have accepted a job with Textron Aviation in Wichita, KS for the coming summer! I will be a Propulsion Engineer starting in June, and I’m very excited to not only already have a job lined up, but also to be working at the same company (and same city) as Sam. I don’t know much about the position besides that yet, but I’m excited to start my career in Wichita (and still be so close to the Rocket Pasture!).
