UBC Rocket Goes to Competition

Goal $2,500

Raised $904

UBC Rocket Goes to Competition

UBC Rocket WENT to competition and we WON our category!
However, we still need your support to help us cover the costs of getting Cypress down to New Mexico. Our team incurred last-minute expenses for transportation, accommodation, miscellaneous parts, and more – we would appreciate any monetary support, and all money raised above the target amount will roll over to supporting next year’s rocket adventure. Thank-you!

Story Description

The Cypress rocket is the first competition rocket fielded by UBC Rocket since the team’s foundation nine months ago. It is designed to travel to 10,000 feet—powered by a commercial off-the-shelf motor—deploy a payload at apogee, and return safely to the ground under two student-designed and built parachutes. On its maiden voyage, Cypress will experience over 20g of acceleration and reach over 80% of the speed of sound.

Cypress is largely student-developed and constructed: Carbon fibre body tubes, machined aluminum internal structure, 3D printed aerodynamic features, a fully functional apogee detection system, a unique payload system, and both rocket parachutes were all designed, built, and verified by UBC students on the UBC Rocket team.

UBC Rocket is a relatively new engineering design team at the University of British Columbia, dedicated to the design, construction, and launch of sounding rockets. For our first year, we are designing and building a rocket to compete in the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition. This competition is the largest university-level rocket competition in the world, and brings together hundreds of students from over 70 schools across North America and abroad to showcase and launch their rockets.

On June 17, 2017, Cypress and an 18-member support team will begin their journey down to New Mexico to represent UBC for a first-time appearance at the 2017 Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition.

Challenges & Impact of Your Support

Starting any new engineering student team from scratch requires significant amounts of time, effort, and funding. We’re thankful for the incredible sponsors and supporters who have helped to fund the development of our first rocket, but we need additional support to help cover the costs of bringing our rocket and our team to New Mexico for the week-long competition.

Your support would help the cost of materials, like transportable storage containers; team competition fees; and travel and shipping costs for getting our team and rocket to New Mexico and back.

About UBC Rocket

UBC Rocket is comprised of 55 active members, representing four different faculties and seven engineering disciplines. Rocketry is a true multidisciplinary engineering challenge, providing significant materials, chemical, mechanical, software and electronic engineering challenges to all of our members.

Every Sunday, our team meets to solve those challenges, and gets us closer to our long-term goal of sending a rocket to the edge of space: 300,000 feet above the Earth.