UKSEDS Rocketry Blastoff

UKSEDS kicked off this year’s workshops with a highly successful rocketry event at the University of Sheffield. Over 40 participants were introduced to the world of model rocketry by Teejay, the UKSEDS projects officer and resident rocketry aficionado. The sessions included construction of model and high powered rockets, health and safety, structures, engines, launch operations, and future opportunities. We also took the opportunity to announce the UKSEDS National Student Rocketry Championship – more details of which are coming soon!

The workshop was structured so that attendees could take what they’d learnt back to their branch to work on a rocketry project of their own, hopefully building something to enter into the new Championship competition.

Dr Adam Baker, a senior lecturer in space engineering at Kingston University, who very kindly gave a presentation at the workshop drawing on his experience both as a UKSEDS member (Committee ‘94) and founder of AspireSpace, will also be helping us set up the Championship competition.

One session that was especially well received was introduction to rocketry CAD. This session outlined how members at the workshop could structure branch rocketry lessons for their branch members while also getting hands-on experience using an open-source rocketry CAD software package called Open Rocket. Members got so engrossed in designing and simulating their rockets that it was all Teejay could do to get them to move on to the next session. “I have gone around and seen 20-30 different designs, and not one is the same, they are all different – some are insanely big, some are ridiculously fast and other are out of this world, which is the kind of variation I am aiming for within UK-based student rocketry”

We received great feedback from attendees too:

“I expected the Workshop to be good, but I didn’t expect I would enjoy it as much as I did. To be fair since it was my first workshop I didn’t know what to expect, and the organisational skills of those involved were impressive… very enjoyable”
“ I didn’t expect to learn so much about the different rockets and the presentations/talks were really good”.

We would like to extend a special thanks to Dr Baker, and the committee of ShefSEDS for their tireless work in helping make this event happen. We had great fun ourselves, and and we plan to run this event again in the near future. If you missed out this time round, don’t miss out again!