Final Blog Post, "Better Late Than Never"

The overall outcome of our rocket lab was not a success. Our final rocket did not make the 10-second requirement, and did not meet all the physical requirements. Launch after launch, something always went wrong. Fins would fall off, the nose cone would stay on, or the parachute would not deploy. Although, our first rocket did make and exceed the 10-second requirement, we did not capture the launch on video. This launch was timed at about 21 seconds, and had a successful deployment of the parachute. After the destruction of our first rocket, our group tried to duplicate all aspects of our first rocket. Appearance wise, everything seemed the same. But little did we know that this rocket was going to be a false hope to our group. Our group theorized many ideas of why this rocket was not as effective as our first one. As troubleshooters, we adapted to what we thought was the problem, but it didn’t make any difference. We made as much adjustments we could before we launched, and still had no exceptional results to show for it.

Some possible reasons of our second rocket being a failure is, the weight of the rocket, the design of the parachute, the trouble of the cap coming off the rocket, and the weather. Our group was not afraid to use the hot glue, and we intended to make our rocket indestructible. But in doing so, this added more weight to our design. The aesthetics of the second rocket was very well done, but we were unaware that the tape added unnecessary weight as well as cut down on the pressure within the chamber of the rocket. Due to the added weight of our rocket, we theorized that the design of our parachute was not adequate. Not only the design, but also the deployment of the parachute was not synchronized. It would either come out to early not allowing the rocket to reach its highest, or it would deploy too late causing our rocket to plummet into the ground, almost destroying our whole project.

Overall this lab was a good experience, teaching our group numerous lessons. The importance of finishing tasks on time was clearly important to our group. Our group was behind from the start, and really never got back on top and caught up with the rest of the class. We also learned that communication between group members is key. Many miscommunications amongst our group held us from our full potential but also made the group better in the long run, because we learn from our mistakes. The last lesson this project taught us, is being responsible for your part, and depending on your group to do their part.  When someone falls behind, it’s important to have someone there to pick you up, and help you to catch up. This video shows our best recorded launch that we captured on film. Overall this was our normal launch, which didn't exceed, but met our expectations.

The following is data our group collected while launching our rockets.

Launch #	Air Pressure	Amount of Water	Height	Approximated Air-Time	Result of Launch
1st Launch	70 Psi	1.2 L	300 ft.	21 Seconds	The rocket launched, parachute opened, slowly drifted down. Perfect launch.
2nd Launch	45 Psi	1.4 L	0 ft.	0.001 Seconds	The rocket reached 40Psi, and then the rocket exploded. (A first in Kam. Physics History)
3rd Launch	65 Psi	1.2 L	200 ft.	11.3 Seconds	The rocket launched, arched, parachute didn’t deploy, and then crashed into Hala trees.
Final Launch	55-75 Psi	1.1-1.4 L	50-100 ft.	2 - 7 Seconds	Launches this day were very poor, and varied in reasons why they failed. Reasons are explained in paragraphs.

Published by (Noah and Darin)