Members of UA's new rocket design team, known as the Akronauts.
A supersonic rocket design project has never been attempted in the history of The University of Akron. Until now. A group of industrious UA engineering students, known as the Akronauts, will load the 13-foot rocket they designed and built into a trailer on Monday morning and head to Utah for the annual Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC). The rookie rocketeers will compete in the 10th annual international competition against more than 40 collegiate teams.
The objective of the competition is to launch a rocket with a 10-pound payload to an altitude of 20,000 feet and safely recover all components of the rocket. The teams will also submit a technical report and give a presentation.
The interdisciplinary UA student design team is less than a year old and is made up of students majoring in various engineering fields, computer science, physics and chemistry.
“The biggest obstacle we’ve had to overcome was the integration of all of the systems,” says mechanical engineering student and team captain Christopher Gorman. “The engineering students had to explain to the programmers why the parachutes needed to eject at a specific altitude, the students with manufacturing experience had to give input to the designers, and so on.”
The team’s faculty adviser is Dr. Frances Loth, professor of mechanical engineering. Loth says the team is one of the hardest working groups of students he has seen in a long time.
The design team was founded by UA engineering alumni Jesse Batko and Kenneth Wayne Smith, Jr. Both Batko and Smith graduated from The University of Akron in May 2015. Smith is currently working at NASA Kennedy Space Center, and Batko is a mechanical engineer with Firmilab in Batavia, Ill.
The competition begins Wednesday, June 24 and concludes Saturday, June 27, 2015.
Left: This colorful parachute will
guide the rocket to a safe landing
and was hand sewn by Akronaut members.