UBC Rocket is Going to Competition!
UBC Rocket is re-launching at the Spaceport America Cup to defend our winning title AND reach greater heights!
Story Description
This past summer, 20 of our members drove down to the New Mexico desert to represent UBC at the premier international rocketry competition, the Spaceport America Cup (SAC). We brought only our first rocket and an overflowing excitement to launch the result of thousands of hours of hard work from 50+ team members. Our goal was to reach 10,000 feet.
To our amazement, we exceeded this goal to take home first place in the most competitive category of the competition. We managed to successfully launch and score higher than seasoned teams from top schools such as MIT and McGill.
Our success sparked a high level of interest from the rest of the community. During recruitment, we received over 200 applications from UBC students and even heard from some keen high school students. All this lead to the creation of our current projects and programs in order to provide more opportunities for the curious minds in our community.
Now with more projects and members, our team is gearing up to finish building our competition rockets and to make the trip down to New Mexico for SAC 2018!
Challenges & Impact of Your Support
Our competition rockets will head down with 20+ team members to the New Mexico desert to be launched in June. Over 5 days of dust, heat, rocket launches and definitely no sleep, the team will aim to launch our three rockets a total of 5 times.
Our rockets are nearing completion, but the road to New Mexico is still long (and expensive). Our members need support to purchase last minute launch equipment as well as cover the cost of transporting the rockets, launch rail, and launch team members to New Mexico for the launch. By making a gift, you will be directly helping us launch our three rockets at the Spaceport America Cup, and supporting our dedicated members on an amazing opportunity to take part in the largest rocketry competition in the world!
About UBC Rocket
UBC Rocket is comprised of 60+ active members, representing four different faculties and ten engineering disciplines. Rocketry is an exciting and difficult field, providing significant materials, chemical, mechanical, software, electronic and other engineering challenges to all of our members. Furthermore, we draw in skills from the science, arts, and commerce faculties to make ourselves a truly multidisciplinary team.
This past years, our members have contributed countless hours and sleepless nights to design and build our new rockets — two slated to reach 10,000 feet, one slated to reach 30,000 feet, and a final multi-year rocket that will take us to the edge of space: 300,000 feet above the Earth. Additionally, we are building a mobile test stand to test-fire prototype heat-sink engines. Externally, we have partnered with multiple secondary schools and university clubs in our Payloads Program to give others the chance to design their own research experiments on our rockets.
Our mission is to spark more interest in the exciting fields of rocketry and aerospace, and provide students the opportunity to explore actual rocket science.
