Today is Tuesday, May 16, and the juniors are just days away from testing their vehicle at Stewart Ranch in Willow City at Rockets 2017. They will be launching on Thursday, but the time will be determined on site.
Deadline for construction completion was last Thursday, and unfortunately that one they missed. Recovering from that has taken diligence because they have their Flight Readiness Review (FRR) due today. This is a must or they will suffer another set back which they cannot afford this close to T time. Mr. Matthes is confident that they will be ready to launch Thursday.
Their payload is fast growth slime mold. It has been growing and spreading and is ready to be packaged into the rocket and sent into space. It is growing well here on earth, the question to be answered is how will space travel affect its growth, negatively or positively?
Here the juniors, Sergio Walla, Bryce Erwin, and Alex West, left to right, working on the rocket.
In this one Chris Calzada is cleaning excess epoxy off of a fin mount. 
Harrison Spisak, is working on the Flight Readiness Review (FRR)in this last photo.
Even though the seniors’ “Baby Bird” test stand rocket will not fly at Willow City this year, they are still hard at work and progressing well on Red Bird #18 for WSMR in June. The tank has been tested successfully and the vehicles stability has been verified by NASA. This allowed for the fins to be cut so that they can be beveled for aerodynamic purposes, and then welded to the vehicle. The door panels on the forward skirt and aft skirt have been cut, and will be welded to the tank this week.
Four students accumulated 12 hours of work over the weekend fiberglassing the nose cone. According to Mr. Matthes, “Things are coming together very well, but there is still a lot to do.”
This article is the ninth in a series, new for this school year ’16/’17 of updates that will follow the Fredericksburg STEM Academy/Rocket program. This school is a participant of the SystemsGo STEM program. This series of articles is intended to support, encourage, and challenge students in the program as they share their working status and accomplishments throughout the year in the program. These publications will be available for tags and re-posting.
www.systemsgo.org as always is the place for more information on this program. You may also email them at info@systemsgo.org . Take the time to get your school involved, the future of your students will be greatly benefited.
#Rockets2017 #SystemsGo #FredricksburgSTEMAcademy #Launcher01
On the Wings of Angels 