Space Grant Consortium - University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

made out of fiberglass. Although, the centering ring would need to be mounted to the outer body
tube and motor mount tubing with metal corner braces and appropriate hardware, in addition
excessive amounts of epoxy. The fins and the tail cone however, would almost certainly need to
be made from carbon fiber and would have to be a solid one piece custom design.
Dart. A solution for the dart is a fairly obvious one. The use of a dual deployment
tether/parachute system could have allowed the dart to fall much faster and could have likely
kept it within a half mile radius of the launch. This would have added significant amounts of
weight to the dart, but now knowing that Tripoli will launch under almost any wind conditions, it
would obviously be worth it. A practice launch, as was attempted twice, would have also alerted
the team of this. Lastly, as mentioned above, if there was not a radio transmitter in the booster,
the dart could easily be tracked as it fell. If nothing else, the rough direction of its location could
be known.
Conclusion. Maybe the hardest part of this project is just not knowing what happened to
the dart. With school now over, a more intensive and comprehensive search will be made. Using
GPS, a metal detector, and all the information from this report, the team will spend one or two
days attempting to locate the dart in the weeks ahead.
It is the team’s hope that this report illustrates that the rocket was still designed particularly well
and most of the missed objectives came—not from a lack of engineering—but due to random
events out of the team’s control. Had the parachute been deployed even a few seconds after
motor burnout, the booster would have likely came down intact and the team could have spent
more time looking for the dart. Without the high winds and premature ejection, there is a very
good chance that it would have been a very successful flight. Furthermore, a successful flight
would likely have produced a maximum altitude anywhere between 50 and 100 percent higher
than any other rocket launched that day.
The problems that did occur, were never read about or came up in conversations with any
experts. Furthermore, it would have been a poor use of resources to even try and account for
such a rare occurring event. Except for the modification of the transmitter in the booster and the
use of dual deployment in the dart, no other modifications would be made. Ultimately, the team
still feels that that the rocket was designed extremely well.
In addition to all of the work that the team put in, this project could not have been complete
without the help of many people and organizations. The team would gratefully like to express out
thanks to the following: The National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program and the
Wisconsin Space Grand and Consortium for providing all of the funding for this project. Western
Technical College for providing use to their custom prototyping machine at an extremely
discounted rate. Jim Connors, a Mechanical Design Technology student from WTC, who helped
with the operation of the custom prototyping machine. The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Physics Department for providing a location to have meetings and store the rocket.
References
[1] Stine, G.H. 2004. Handbook of Model Rocketry. Wiley, University of Michigan.
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