UCI Rocket Project

I was Chief Engineer of the UCI Rocket project 2022 - 2023, I've had an amazing time leading and working on this project. I led this team through several cold flows, our longest burn static fire (highest total impulse of all previous static fires), and launched UCI's first bipropellant liquid rocket. Below are the milestones I was able to see through as Chief Engineer of the project...

I started at UCI Rocket Project as an avionics engineer after transferring from Arizona State University (ASU). I began by retrofitting the current avionics system to function with the developing rocket engine along with making GUIs to track engine state. This involved bringing the avionics knowledge I taught myself at ASU to complete the avioncis suite. I completed development on the engine control unit and attempted to make use of RS485 for communication to and from the vehicle. The chips used were cheap and voided the noise resiliance of standard RS485 resulting in occasional random switching of solenoids. Due to this and several other fluids issues including main valves freezing over, engines not chilling to desired temperatures, and some other minor issues, our first static fire attempt in a vertical configuration was scrubbed. This attempt was known as VTF#1. From here, I got promoted to being the Chief Engineer of the project due to my multifaceted understanding of the system. As Chief Engineer, I made myself a promise to see this project through to launch. The first change I made was to finish the communications system I began as an avionics engineer. I switched to ethernet which was far more resiliant to noise and allowed anyone on the team to view the status of the rocket engine from any device on the launch network. Following this was completing the rocket. It involved setting ambitous deadlines for all subteams and being very involved in the testing and development of every subsystem on the project. By becoming competent in all aspects of our project, I became the prime contact to review test data to parse for problems and areas of improvement. As a result, I was able to optimize procedures and reduce procedure run time from a whole day to 3-4 hrs. This worked out perfectly for our second hot fire attempt (VTF#2) which resulted in the longest burn of this engine. Following this, involved packaging everything up into a launch vehicle and launching UCI's first liquid rocket. On launch, the rocket hit a record breaking 13.5 sec burn time and hit an apogee of 9300 feet, but unfortunately, was not recovered. The struts snapped off when the parachute deployed resulting in a partial recovery of the avionics bay, but losing the entire fluids system.