Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas! I hope that you are all having a good time wherever you are spending the festive season and getting some R&R in. If you find you need a space fix at some point, though, why not combine it with the Christmas spirit and try watching Santa Claus Conquers The Martians - ranked by IMDB as the 65th worst movie of all time and described by badmovies.org as "the worst darn Christmas movie ever." Enjoy! :)

Dr Chris Welch receives UKSEDS honours

At the 2008/9 UKSEDS change over meeting, Dr Chris Welch was presented with a plaque honouring his long term involvement with the society.  The meeting was held at the British Interplanetary Society headquarters in Vauxhall.  

(Past UKSEDS vice chair, Alison Gibbings presenting the award of appreciation.) 

  

Rocket Club Launches!

This year we are launching Rocket Club in the Faculty of Engineering, a club for building, testing and flying High Power Rockets! If you would like to be a part of this club, then read on:

Introduction:

This year we are starting up a faculty club for students to introduce, design, build and eventually fly high powered rockets (HPRs). As a bit of a background, Amateur rocketry is broadly split into two categories, model rocketry (low and medium powered fly-in-the-park type rockets) and high powered (serious rockets, regulated and only flown by certified people). We will be setting up this club to work with the latter - high power rockets. This year we have only one goal with Rocket Club, which is to get as many of the members a UKRA (United Kingdom Rocketry Association) Level 1 certification. This certification is a license that allows you to fly high power rockets (up to a certain size limit).

However to get this certification, it is not just a matter of filling out some paperwork and handing over some money - UKRA requires you to pass a rocket flight test. This involves you building your own HPR, testing it to ensure it will perform correctly and on a test day later this year, flying it. Upon a successful flight (everything working well, rocket going in the right direction, parachutes deploying, recovery successful, etc), you will be awarded your UKRA Level 1 license.

Thanks to funding from the Faculty, we will be running an subsidy scheme, to offset the costs associated with building and flying your rocket. The exact amount of the subsidy will depend on how many people join Rocket Club. The Faculty funding will also pay for motor casing, motor reloads, transport to the launch day, Rocket Club t-shirts, etc.

Rocket Club Rules:

To qualify for the subsidy you will need to do the following:

1. On January 9th at 11 am turn up at RV111 with your rocket kit and receipt (details below of approved kits).
2. Build your rocket during the Spring Term
3. Join UKRA.
4. Fly your rocket on the test day and achieve UKRA Level 1 certification

Upon certification you will receive the full subsidy. If you make it to the flight day and launch your rocket but do not, for any reason, achieve Level 1 certification, then you will receive half of the subsidy amount.

Important Dates:

• 09/01/09 – Meet in RV111 at 1100 for the first Rocket Club meeting
• 01/04/09 – Rocket build and paint complete
• 2 or 3/05/09 – Test day (date tbc)
• Wednesday afternoons – Rocket building sessions

Approved Kits (NB: Ideal Christmas present!):

To qualify for the subsidy, you will need to turn up to the first rocket club meeting (05/01/09) with an appropriate rocket kit to start building. There are many types of rocket kits of different levels of complexity and performance. To help get started we have made a list of approved kits to buy. We will be providing rocket motors and reloads for one size of rocket. These will be a 38mm Cesaroni motor size. If you want to use the motors that Kingston University will provide, it is important that you make sure your rocket will take these motors. The approved rocket kits are all by Public Missiles Ltd and the preferred supplier is RocketStore.

• Io (PML-IO38) - £44.95
• Callisto (PML-CALLISTO38) - £47.95
• Explorer (PML-EXPLORER38) - £54.95
• MR1 (PML-MR1) - £54.95
• Bullpup (PML-BULLPUP) - £74.95

Please be aware that these rocket kits are sometimes out of stock and you may have to wait up to 3 weeks for them to be delivered.

** IMPORTANT!!** There are two standard motor sizes for HPR – 29 mm and 38 mm. Rocket Club is standardizing on 38 mm, so it is **essential** that whatever kit you buy is for this size motor.

Further reading:

High power rocketry is a technical and fun hobby, and like most technical areas, there are many things to learn. Below are some recommended websites to read through to get a good introduction into HPR.

• United Kingdom Rocketry Association
  
• Rocketstore
• UKRocketman
  

Don't forget, HPR can incorporate many areas of your studies (Propulsion, Aerodynamics, Introduction to Astronautics, Dynamics,..), so your own lecture notes will also be a valuable resource.

If you have any questions any questions, drop us a line. In the meantime Happy Christmas!

Barnaby and Chris

Opportunity for European Students to Attend NASA Academy 2009

ESA is sponsoring two students from ESA Member and Cooperating States to attend the 2009 NASA Academy. In 2007, Kingston Astro student Alison Gibbings was selected for this.

The NASA Academy is a ten-week, intensive summer research programme conducted in four of the NASA centres: Ames Research Centre, Glenn Research Centre, Goddard Space Flight Centre and Marshall Space Flight Centre. Designed for undergraduate and graduate students interested in aerospace engineering and space sciences, it enables them to participate in NASA research projects. See here for more details.

The application deadline is 16 January 2009.

NASA Ames High

I'm just back from a trip to the NASA Ames Research Center for a three day meeting planning the International Space University's SSP09 programme which will be hosted there in the summer (and at which I'll be running one the three team projects) - and I have to say that I'm extremely impressed. The NASA folk there have a real can-do attitude and are even doing building works into to accommodate the SSP's particular needs. I think that this is going to be one of the best SSPs ever (and I'm not just saying that because it's going to be in California). Frankly, if you are eligible to apply for the ISU SSP (basically, you have to be graduating this year) then I think you should seriously be considering applying. It's not cheap, it is true, but it is worth it (and remember, because Kingston is an Affiliate of ISU, you are eligible for a discount).

While I was at Ames, I met up with Will Marshall, a former UKSEDS member and ISU alumnus. He is now working at the NASA Lunar Science Institute at Ames. Have a look here to see some of low-cost lunar landing work he is doing.

Fly your Thesis! Team attend the ESA panel meeting in Cologne

On the 1st-3rd of December, the MEng FYT team (Carlos Munoz Moya, Hana Rabuzin, Adam Lambert and James Arkwright) and myself travelled to Cologne to present the research proposal and experiment design to the ESA panel.

(The team at the ESA EAC - Cologne)

  

The two day event was split into the competition panel on the first day and on the second day a series of presentations from ESA representatives about their facilities, capabilities and future strategies and missions.  The trip ended with a tour around the European Astronaut Centre.  One highlight was an impromptu visit from French Spationaut, Jean-François Clervoy (after completing his medical) and dropped by to see how things were going.  

(Jean-François Clervoy)

The team were competing against 15 other European teams of MSc and PhD students.  The Kingston team gave a compelling presentation and we have high hopes (excuse any pun) for a good outcome.  Even if the road ends here for the team, it has been a great experience for the team to present and defend their idea infront of a ESA scientific panel. 

(The team explaining how taps drip in zero g)