John A. McCartney
Efficient, Inspired Design
Model Rocketry
During my undergraduate career, my primary extracuricular activity was the club NU Space Technology and Rocketry Society. In my time with the club, I worked on several competition rockets while also holding the position of Club President for a year long term.
The rockets pictured left were designed for both research and competition purposes. The two on the left were designed to reach a precise atltitude of one mile. The larger purple rocket was designed to conduct a payload experiment at 10,000 ft.
Rockets of this scale require several subsystems to perform a complete and safe flight. Two systems I worked on were the payload and avionics bays. the payload pay featured a self sealing door capable of securing the desired payload. The avionics bay (below) tracks altitude using dual altimeters and fires the parachute ejection charges at precise altitudes.
Rocketry construction techniques such as through-the-wall fins (left) were used on all designes to secure the fins. The program Open Rocket was used to simulate flight paths for customized rocket designs (below).
