When does fiberglass become necessary?

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**Then there's the whole topic of college competitions. In short, they're great opportunities, I love them, they nudged me into high-power. They also run the risk of pushing people into rushed certification.
Of course these students may never want to make rocketry a hobby/sport, they're looking for a career and an opportunity to distinguish themselves from the crowd.

The project deadlines plus lack of experience plus coursework plus pressure to push the performance because somebody on exec level is paying for results. We had assigned mentors leave due to pace. Started with airfoils, MD multistage, custom launch pad, pestering about maximum allowable altitude under approved waivers and HAM rated electronics. Prof got a cert the day before our project test flight. I still don't know how we got third at SEDS. They were all you guys never even did this before. I filled up a flash drive full of scratch rockets and rocket info literally. We drove to Utah, Virginia, and Florida. I got three patentable items out of my work that semester. Granted I'm too poor to patent stuff now. My team had to start the club too. We started it all from scratch. Only airspace was familiar to me at first as a student pilot from other hobbies. There was so much to learn on TRF, Google, and at the launch sites talking to people and by trying stuff.

Worked in a car factory on an internship 11 hour shifts on summer and loved it to help pay after a prototype didn't do as well as planned. We did that whole design, build, and test then repeat process to create new stuff for HPR which was so much fun. We went for a world record then backed off and halving performance on second rocket design flight to reduce costs. We sorta felt shark tank dunked into HPR. Many on team didn't even have an LPR launch under belt. Best advice on TRF was Raven 3 and TeleGPS seemed popular. I'm no Ivy League snot either. If your gonna be dumb you gotta work harder then try smarter. Many people wouldn't have done what we did. University is still in shock we did it. Wish we knew more about HEI closures. That and experience is what got us. I took a bunch of flak for just going for it all out. We weren't quitting and we had signed death waivers anyhow. Many sleepless nights. Thirty five hours in a car once. Stop to piss, ****, eat, swap seats, or sleep. Senior projects and that you must pass classes sequentially. One hell of a motivator. You don't know either! Fine. Ummm we'll try something. College comps were more risks than CeRT flights. Performance of rocket pretty hot. Low time experience on flight crews/designers. 20 of 88 flew. Don't hate if you've never tried team comps. Different mindset. I was reading IREC reports of stuff hitting trees horizontally then trying crack at design SEDS multistage supersonic rockets. But I'll take a lot of flak likely. That you're an engineer student you should figure it out BS line. And meanwhile inside that dear god feeling. David said we were over our heads. And looking back on it we were.

Carbon fiber and fiberglass are plenty. Fiberglass is excellent when budget vaporizes on first bad test flight. Yeah the comps drove me to take an interest in HPR.
 
Sounds familiar. That was my life a couple years ago (not to the extremes you recount though)

That experience is valuable for many students. The learning process, inspiration, problem solving, etc..

The journey for those that have no prior rocket experience will have more bumps and risks. For that very reason, there will always be those in the hobby community that dislike such activities. Part of the journey is finding those that can guide/mentor without tearing down. (and another part is learning to blend the safety/reliability of traditional practices with the innovation and experimentation)

Like we both stated, a side effect of such competitions will result in a few joining the hobby for personal enjoyment and experimentation. I return to my original point: what many consider "normal" progression (model>mid>electronics/hpr>fiberglass etc...) is but one path of development for the Hi-power hobbyist.

There has to be a better way to come along side folks than telling to go back and fly some Alpha's for awhile. (gross exaggeration, but that's basically how some advice has come across occasionally)
 
Next SEDS team needs to fly some Alphas. They don't have any experience in LpR.
 
Prof got yelling for them to go fly stuff. They haven't figured out open rocket in over a semester. We were at prelim design complete with sim files and we were building kits for practice build techniques before building project rockets.

Prof told us that we old team members are advisors for new team but I feel they need an L-2 mentor. Already earned my credit hours and not involved in project personally. This team doesn't have the same passion to learn or much care at all. We gave em four hours of advice last semester in a meeting. And I would LOL but this isn't funny. Why competitions can't send a mentor? I'll never understand.
 
Prof got yelling for them to go fly stuff. They haven't figured out open rocket in over a semester. We were at prelim design complete with sim files and we were building kits for practice build techniques before building project rockets.

Prof told us that we old team members are advisors for new team but I feel they need an L-2 mentor. Already earned my credit hours and not involved in project personally. This team doesn't have the same passion to learn or much care at all. We gave em four hours of advice last semester in a meeting. And I would LOL but this isn't funny. Why competitions can't send a mentor? I'll never understand.

Just wondering when, if ever, you will make a reply relevant to the original post? Granted, this thread went off topic way back, but was still relevant due to discussions about rocket building.

You just talk about you.

I bet you're a nice guy, but seriously, not everything is about your college rocket times. You remind me of Uncle Rico from "Napoleon Dynamite."

Just because you have a thought doesn't mean you have to share it.
 
It used to be that way in business, too. Guy comes out of college, gets a job at the ground level, works his way up. These days, kids come out of college immediately expecting to go into management. And when that doesn't work out, their helicopter parents call the company and complain.

Two incidents I know of at my own company. One was a young woman I was interviewing. She kept saying that she wanted to make a difference, that that was her goal. She expected the company to provide her with the means to "make a difference." So with each role we considered, that was her main thrust. Finally, we got to talking about our company's community outreach efforts, wherein we support various charities that the employees bring to the company's attention. This apparently was a game-changer for her. Now she could do whatever job she was qualified to do, but "make a difference" in her community outreach.

Another one is from a friend of mine who is a manager. He brought in a first-year employee for his first annual review. He was reviewed and given a small raise based on his accomplishments. Well, apparently the raise was not big enough, because his parents called the president and CEO of the company to complain. This was a 23-year-old.

"The times, they are a changin' ...."

My former company had a 20 or so interns in the 20 years I was there. 5 or so were stellar, 1 was a total dud (he still lives in legend), and the rest were varying degrees of pretty decent. The funny thing the dud did was argue with *everyone* with more experience. He also had grossly inflated ideas about salary, apparently steered the wrong way by his professors. I think that ratio of excellent to reasonable to crap is pretty common across lots of different jobs.

That said, my wife had a parent of a student (can't remember if it was undergrad or graduate) come into the library where she works to try to get my wife to do the student's project. Note the student wasn't even there. Also, at parent orientation at University of Washington, they tell the parents not to call the dean if their student gets a bad grade. The student needs to talk to the professor.

There was a thing going around a while back about how the participation trophies everyone talks about were for the millenials' parents, not for the millenials. I think there's a lot of truth to that.

Sorry to continue the threadjack, back to helping the high school students build the baby L rocket... :)
 
Helicopter parents.... I am on year 19 of an enjoyable career in higher ed and, while still relatively rare, the helicopter parent episodes are increasing. Our annual FERPA training now specifically addresses them.

Still, no one with a faculty appointment ever forgets their first helicopter parent episode. They are always truly bizarre.


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