Astronautics offers cadets unique opportunity

Astronautical Engineering 452/453 Rocket Engineering, the academy's two-course path to becoming a rocket scientist, has encouraged students to move a step closer to that goal, when a project took flight on April 25, 2007. Cadet Nation's prompting sent an 11.5 foot tall, 7 inch diameter, 115 pound rocket blasting away with 1100 pounds of thrust from a solid rocket motor. No other university is building and launching this class of rocket at the undergraduate level, which included developing the rocket motor with propellant, insulation, throat and nozzle, pressure vessel case, and recovery system. Air Force Research Laboratory's space propulsion division takes cadets on field trips to government and industry sites of space propulsion interest as well. The mission for 2008 will be to shoot for 330,000 feet and the Air Force Space Test Program officials also plan to put experimental payloads on future mission.