2019 Year in Review
December 30, 2019
2019 was a really solid year to end the decade on. I’m close to finishing school, spent the summer doing what I love, and spent time with the people I care most about. I flew some more rockets, swam 100 miles over the course of the 12 months, picked up a new sport (tennis), completed my 2nd and 3rd semesters of grad school, and even accepted a full-time job offer following graduation.
I wanted to use this post to recap my experiences this past year, not just in rocketry, but my others interests and adventures, too.
The spring semester was one of my best at OSU, with interesting classes (Rocket Propulsion and UAS Propulsion) and a good balance of coursework with teaching and research assistant duties. The rocket propulsion class project tackled 2 tasks: developing research motors and designing a 3D-printed, water-cooled rocket nozzle for 38mm motors. I worked to oversee and manage both projects, since they complimented each other well and some overlap existed between the constraints between each project’s goals. We were successful in firing potassium nitrate-sorbitol (KNSB) research motors, and while we also designed and printed many water-cooled nozzles, none adequately withstood the temperatures and pressures from the KNSB exhaust. I’m heading to Orlando next week to present our nozzle findings at AIAA SciTech.
At the end of the semester, a long-time friend of mine got married in Pennsylvania, so Sam and I flew to Philadelphia to attend. It was a wonderful weekend, and we got to explore some of Philly during our last day.
For the summer, I had two part-time RA jobs, and with the extra spare time, I wanted to relearn some of the course material I didn’t properly learn or retain from previous undergrad classes such as Measurements and Instrumentation, Compressible Fluid Flow, and Mechanical Design. The summer months ended up being far busier than I anticipated, so while I didn’t get to that course material, I did teach myself some Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T).
My RA duties involved furthering our research motor capability with KNSB propellant and building rockets for Honeywell and the National Security Campus in Kansas City, MO. I worked with 2 other grad students on the latter, and that’s where the bulk of the summer’s work came from. We built 2 8″ diameter fiberglass rockets to carry their payloads and safely recover after each launch. We were attempting to reach the highest acceleration g-loading possible, so our choice of motors were limited. Built from Madcow’s 8″ DX3 kits, we added additional electronics and extensively tested recovery deployment events. The second rocket was 13ft tall, weighed 130lb on the pad (our heaviest rocket before this summer was 73lb), and flew on CTI N5800 motors ($1300 of propellant per launch) even cracking supersonic speeds during boost. It was a ton of fun to work on this, and our 3-person team was perfect. We flew these 2 rockets 4 times (1 in July, 2 in August on the same day, and 1 in November). Honeywell wants to continue this contract which provides our team with equipment, experience, and a steady stream of RA employment. I made a video recapping my 2019 year in rocketry below the photo.
My girlfriend, Samantha, and I celebrated our 2-year dating anniversary in August and even moved in together with a 3rd roommate and mutual friend of ours. In addition to attending the many rocket launches together this year, we also went to several concerts throughout the year in Dallas, OKC, and Tulsa to see Barns Courtney, Smallpools, VHS Collection, and lovelytheband. Also just last month we also adopted a dog together which has been wonderful. Her name is Kenzie, and she’s a 1 year old Great Pyrenees mix.
The fall started off with LDRS 38 which I made a separate post here. The school semester itself was a tough one, ironically enough because I took 2 undergraduate classes for graduate credit. The workload was huge, and as a result, I didn’t make much progress on my thesis or RA work. I was able to maintain my 4.0 GPA however, and I’m looking forward to the spring which should hopefully have a lighter load.
Outside of school, I picked up 2 new interests this year: tennis and board games. I’m enjoying finding more things that I’m passionate about that aren’t so closely tied to my university studies and professional aspirations. There are a lot more people out there and finding these new interests are letting me meet people outside of engineering for a change.
Throughout the year, the OSU Department of Wellness hosted their “100 Mile Swim Challenge” and tasked students and faculty who signed up with logging 100 miles worth of laps swum at the OSU pools. I did most of that distance during the summer, and completed the year with 115 miles swum! Having grown up a competitive swimmer but being out of it for the last 5 years, this was a great way to get me in the pool beyond just water polo.
I ended the year by celebrating the holidays with my folks in Arkansas. My dad and I played tennis, I showed them a few new board games, and Sam and Kenzie came to visit for a couple days after Christmas. As this year and the decade conclude, I’m very grateful for the good health of my family, friends, and my own, and I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to study at OSU the last 6 years. I’ll finish up in May and begin my professional career as a Propulsion Engineer with Textron Aviation in Wichita, KS at the start of the 2020 decade. Until next year!