Yes, I am a Rocket Scientist

Well unless you have been living under a rock for a while you will have noticed that I haven’t posted in a while (if you have been living under a rock, my condolence for the loss of your sanity). This of course was primarily due to school, either being there all day or simply working on stuff for it all day (I have a habit of staying late on Tuesday nights). However I feel it is only appropriate you bring you in on the great joyous wonders of what I have been doing for the past month.

To start aerospace propulsion, as I have my exam tomorrow and I am expecting an A in the class because I am approximately 15-25 points above the average on every exam and HW (even though I am a junior in a senior class), I can honestly say that “Yes, I am a rocket scientists.” I will let you in on the cool stuff I did for this class, including solving for the speed of a single stage rocket, a two stage rocket, a three stage rocket and an infinite stage rocket (yes I know its not possible but it tells you the theoretical maximum final velocity for the rocket). Additionally, I solved for the temperatures in the oxygen pre-burner and the hydrogen pre-burner in the Space Shuttles Main Engines. Also, I found the thrust coefficient for a twisted propeller (unfortunaly I cant find the really cool graph).

For my Design of Mechanical Components class I wrote a 400 line program designed to completely automate my final project design. The project consisted of a stepped shaft with two gears on it held by two bearings. I had the computer solve for the system even having it work in the fact that the parts had to have an infinite life. At the end I had it tell me which configuration had the smallest weight and wala a perfectly designed shaft.

As I am finished all my exams this week hopefully next weeks post wont involve my classes, and on the off chance you made it this far, thank you and congratulations.