Orbitality

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, capitalist governments worldwide breathed a sigh of collective relief. No more opposing ideologies, no more space races, and no more competition.

Sputnik, in its intimidating shiny exterior, encourages young scientists no longer. Fervor for science is now motivated by desire for personal success. Patriotism and pride are replaced with the less romantic drive to get more money.

It is plainly apparent that there is not much interest in doing science and engineering (which is not the same as taking a class). There are few students that go home and whip out their chemistry sets and soldering irons.

Encouraging Creativity

Science and engineering is not about reading textbooks. It’s not about solving word problems. It’s not about going to class.

It is about playing in the sandbox. It is about building stuff. Most importantly, it’s about being creative. Science and engineering is like painting or writing novels, except you use a soldering iron as a pencil and brush.

My high school created a program where seniors (12th grade) can work on independent projects. They can make a play, start a band, or intern at a company.This is a trend in many schools across the country: schools are integrating “real world” learning into their curriculum. I’m participating in said program, and we’ll find out if it succeeds in teaching relevant stuff.

Building Rockets

I’m building rockets this year. I found a book at the school library on Amateur Rocketry. On the first page there is an insert that lists who took out the book and when. When do you think was the last time someone read that book?

April, 1983.

Nobody is interested in going to Mars anymore. I guess the Martians will be satisfied after all.
Anybody can build a rocket out of a kit: but its more fun to build it from scratch. What’s even more interesting is tracking the the flight path of the rocket. If your grandfather listened to Sputnik over the radio, he would probably track the altitude of his rocket with a stopwatch or by measuring the angle it made relative to the ground. But in the age of silicon, it is so much more appropriate to build an electronic payload.

So here’s what I’m doing. I’m building an altimeter using three accelerometers and a pressure sensor for verification. The accelerometers will provide three axes of acceleration data: X, Y, Z. The pressure sensor will provide the apogee (pressure is lower at a higher altitude). All this data will be stored by a PIC microcontroller onto a small EEPROM memory chip. Upon landing, the device will be recovered and stored data will be analyzed.

This data is useful in designing a rocket that will fly higher.