Comments From Gimmick Command – The Fifth Anniversary Project

It’s a new entry of the Great Galactic Space Gimmick’s column, Comments from Gimmick Command.

As we approach the 5th anniversary of The Great Galactic Space Gimmick, I will admit that I have not posted on the blog in some time, but there is a reason for this.  The greatest reason is that between 2018 and now (2022) I’ve been working on and completing my Master’s in Systems Engineering degree from the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs (or UCCS).  So what is Systems Engineering?  I published an article some time back talking about Systems Engineering in detail.

The CONOPS diagram of the sounding rocket’s operation.

The specific undertaking of this has been the development of a small-scale Sounding Rocket for my Capstone Project.  The sponsor of this is Kino Junior High School of Mesa, AZ, and the school’s STEM department.  I worked with two other UCCS students in the development of the CONOPS, Requirements, Model-Based Systems Engineering model, and Rocksim design and simulation for the rocket.  With the conclusion of this Capstone, I plan to build the designed rocket over the summer with a targeted launch date of October 2022 in Tucson, AZ at the SARA (South Arizona Rocketry Association for NAR) launch site.

The Sounding Rocket in development with subsystems noted.

Shortly, I plan on a detailed series of articles (in this blog’s School Days of Gimmick column) to cover the design and development of the rocket shortly, and I share authorship with my two UCCS colleagues Cindy Judd (FL) and Austin Galley (CO) for the design and development. What should be noted is that this project is part of the aforementioned Great Galactic Space Gimmick’s Gimmick Aerospace Special Projects (or GASP) initiative.  This project is done completely free without any financial support from other organizations or companies (including Kino Junior High School) and is done voluntarily for the sake of increasing interest in STEM science disciplines.

The designed Sounding Rocket.

In the 21st century, scientific and technological innovations have become increasingly important as humanity faces the benefits and challenges of both globalization and a knowledge-based economy. To succeed in this era, education programs in schools and other areas have strived to develop their capabilities in STEM to levels much beyond what was considered acceptable in the past. STEM education provides individuals with a well-rounded foundation of skills to help them understand a wide range of concepts and thrive in many industries. Several projects that are commonly utilized are understanding the fundamentals of Rocketry, Robotics, Programming, Navigation, etc.

A Popular STEM project is in the realm of Rocketry such as the design and build of a Sounding Rocket. Sounding rockets typically are used for the purpose of taking measurements for geographical observations, testing components for larger payloads implementations and zero-gravity experiments.  With schools and organizations teaming together to do their own projects to participate in future space efforts, they often run into issues such as Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) constraints, Increasing costs, and time delays.  The goal of this project is to team up with sponsors and lay the foundation for these organizations to help achieve their goals from a Systems Engineering perspective.

In this particular case, the sponsor is Kino Junior High School of Mesa, Arizona.  The school has an active STEM program to help students develop the initial skill sets and knowledge needed to function in the scientific, technological, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.  They have used model rockets in the past for the purpose of education but would like a more ambitious rocket that not only teaches the fundamentals of rocketry but gets students thinking about flight operations aspects such as launch vehicle preparation, launchpad installation, launch prep, and recovery.  This sounding rocket has the advantage of providing all of these.

The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS)

The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (or UCCS) team consisted of Cindy Judd, Austin Galley, and myself. Cindy headed the development of the CONOPS (concept of operations), Austin headed the derivation of system requirements, and I chaired the development of Model-Based Systems Engineering models to depict the rocket system and behaviors.  All three took charge of different subsystems of the rocket to ensure robust design and development.

The team held consistent weekly meetings from September 2021 through May 2022 to discuss relevant development activities and deliverables.  The first part of the rocket’s systems engineering activities involved deriving the CONOPS.  In this, the entire description and layout of the rocket and related flight operations were detailed in a manner that was easy to understand by the sponsor (Kino Junior High) as well as determining the most suitable rocket design configuration through the use of TPMs that evaluated these configurations.

Ultimately a single motor, single-stage was selected via the TPM analysis (similar to the Super Arcas on the left side of the above diagram) which was included in the CONOPS to help describe the operation of the rocket in greater detail.

The second major leg of the rocket’s development involved the derivation of system and configuration item (or CI) requirements.  The CONOPS and rocketry documentation such as Tripoli and NAR design standards (2016) were used to derive these requirements in detail, which included both performance and functional types.  Ultimately, each requirement was assigned to individual CI’s, which were the individual subsystem components.

MBSE Model of System

The third major leg of the rocket’s development was the compilation of MBSE models to describe the subsystem layout and behavior of the rocket system.  Methods used were drawn upon from the reference manual SysML Distilled (2014). Use Case models were compiled to describe the operation of the rocket from prelaunch through recovery from the user perspective. In this, each of the requirements (cited earlier) were assigned to specific CI’s and Use Cases to show satisfaction of each.  Activity diagrams were compiled to describe the operation of the rocket system and included all phases of the rocket’s operation from prelaunch, launch, apogee, recovery, and post-flight as well as the operations of the intended payload as cited in the CONOPS and Requirements documentation.  Finally, Block Definition Diagrams of the subsystem CI’s were derived and from this Interface Block Diagrams showing the interlink between CI’s were derived.  All MBSE models were actively cross-referenced with the CONOPS and Requirements documentation to ensure parity between all three and completeness.

Drawing diagram of rocket via Rocksim development software.

The fourth major leg of the rocket’s development was the physical design and simulation of the rocket.  This was done with a powerful software tool called Rocksim, specifically developed for use in designing sport and scientific rockets with great success.  Taking data from the CONOPS, Requirements, and MBSE models into account, Rocksim was used to derive a physical model of the rocket which not only generated a suitable bill of materials but tangible design of the rocket body airframe, payload bay, avionics bay, and recovery items.  Payload mass/size was factored into the design and a large library of available motors was drawn upon to choose one that could loft the rocket and payload to the desired apogee.  Rocksim also provided a graphical simulation of the rocket in various launch conditions which included atmospheric state, time of day, wind conditions, and others to simulate rocket lift, stability, and trajectory.  Through this, a physical design with great confidence was developed.

The final major leg of the rocket’s development is the gathering of the CI components (aka the bill of material or BOM) and the building of the rocket.  As of this writing, this build is ongoing and expected to be completed by September 2022 in time for fall rocket launches.  This includes the airframe structure components, avionics, recovery apparatus, and payload items.

The ultimate goal of the development of this rocket is a launch in Tucson, AZ in October 2022.  The intended payload of a GoPro camera and horse statue figurine will be launched to 4000 ft above ground level (or AGL) on behalf of Kino Junior High School for a science learning event to encourage students to further study STEM disciplines.  The Sounding Rocket’s advantage is to provide the most technologically, effective, yet low-cost product to low-budget organizations.

It conforms to as many known flight/mission standards, is meant to draw heavily on COTS items to make for an effective launch vehicle, can support a wide berth of scientific/other payloads, has a modular design to allow for periodic updates to the design to meet future/unique customer requirements. Further development work involves reservations for future intended testing of advanced technologies and potential configuration changes such as a multi-stage variant that can loft payloads to higher altitudes upon request.

So keep an eye out for later posts which will cover the detail of the rocket design and development.  All those who want to develop their own sounding rocket are welcome to use this and the other articles as reference and guidance in doing so.  The purpose of the GASP initiative is to increase learning and knowledge in space technology and education and this project should serve this purpose greatly.

For the Great Galactic Space Gimmick, I’m Gimmick Commander Ben Faltinowski! 🙂

© Ben Faltinowski and The Great Galactic Space Gimmick, 2022, authorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ben Faltinowski and The Great Galactic Space Gimmick with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Article Citations:

• Delligatti, Lenny (2014). SysML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Systems Modeling Language. Ethical theory and business (1^st ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley
• “NFPA 1127 – Code for High Power Rocketry.” NFPA 1127: Code for High Power Rocketry, https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/all-codes-and-standards/list-of-codes-and-standards/detail?code=1127.
• Tripolimn.org. 2022. Tripoli Research Safety Code. [online] Available at: http://www.tripolimn.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Research-Safety-Code-May-2016.