Meeting notes - 2022 Blue Origin Sponsorship Application

Short description of the goal of your project (if not already included in sponsorship packet)

• Look at sponsorship package

  • Is this adequate?

From drawing board to launch pad, the RIT Launch Initiative is committed to providing members avenues for innovation and experience through real world applications. We pride ourselves on teaching our students the skills to thrive in the field of aerospace. We are continuously building upon the skills of our members and the knowledge base of our teams, with the eventual goal of developing a rocket that successfully reaches the Karman line.

Short description of the team's history and past accomplishments (if not already included in sponsorship packet)

• Look at sponsorship package

  • Is this adequate?

  • Solids

  • Liquids (what can we actually talk about here)

  • IREC

  • Space Race

  • Avionics

This is adequate in the sponsorship packet.

At Blue Origin we believe that diversity, equity and inclusion are essential elements in creating a culture of safety, innovation, and technical ambition. What initiatives does the team have to recruit and retain students from historically underrepresented populations? Include specifics on all underrepresented minorities.

• Diverse leadership

At Launch, we strive to bring in members from all backgrounds, both culturally and technically, and we do not discriminate against disability. We have maintained a policy of no member dues to ensure that there are no barriers to entry which may disproportionally affect underprivileged communities. Additionally, to address differences in starting knowledge we have a onboarding team called Space Race and contributes to our high retention. This program guides new members through the entire process of building a high power rocket complete with training, mentorship, and design reviews.

We encourage leadership from historically underrepresented populations, as is evident from the makeup of our current administration. The leaders of our Spaceport America cup team, Solid Propulsion team, and our Director of Operations are women. These are integral positions at Launch. The IREC (SA cup) team is our primary competition team and contributes to the majority of our membership. The Solid Propulsion team is our newest and most ambitious research and development team. The position of Director of Operations coordinates all internal activities and collaboration between our project teams. Additionally, we have two non-binary members in our leadership: The president of the organization and one of the Space-Race leads.

In the team as a whole, we have members from multiple backgrounds as well. This includes but is not limited to: Members of the neurodiverse community, the LGBTQ community, and the ALANA (African, Latin, Asian, Native American) community.

What innovations in design/build/test are you striving for this year? What upgrades did you make from last year?

• What are we improving upon from our last IREC rocket?

  • better composites manufacturing practices

  • testing

This year, we are working hard to better characterize every aspect of our design before we launch at the 2023 Spaceport America Cup. This includes extensively simulating our airframe and roll-control reaction wheel, improving our carbon fiber tube winding techniques, vibration testing our student-developed flight computer, and stress testing all load-bearing components. We will verify our simulations, physical testing, and launch-day procedures with a full-scale flight test in April, ahead of the Spaceport America Cup.

How does the team maintain knowledge from year to year? Please include details of your team's succession plan, such as information on practices for capturing and archiving data pertaining to design decisions, the manufacturing process, validation of requirements, leadership practices and team organization and new team member training.

• Launch Wiki

• YouTube videos

• 5 min trainings

• Google drive

• Brief description of how it all comes together

• Officer handoff documents

We attack this issue of knowledge retention from multiple angles. It is not enough to just have the information stored in a google drive. There needs to be a culture of knowledge sharing, and that is what we have developed at the RIT Launch Initiative.

New members begin with Space Race, which is a year-long design competition for new members that aims to develop the skills new members would need to succeed at the Spaceport America Cup from scratch. Along the way, they attend trainings, mentorship sessions, and design reviews that culminate in an L2 rocket designed, manufactured, and launched almost entirely by the new members. This program helps us retain new members and encourages them to move up through the organization with their newfound knowledge, taking on leadership and senior technical roles.

Additionally, our team has made great leaps and strides in maintaining more complex knowledge between generations of members and leads. We have developed a comprehensive Confluence wiki to note down all meeting notes, project information, and an extensive collection of tutorials for design principles and software packages. Every week, we encourage information sharing through a five-minute training from a team lead or club senior, on any useful topic the presenter chooses. Anything that is not found on the wiki, can be found in our Google Drive which contains all documents/files related to any project that has been completed or attempted at Launch.

Launch Initiative Home

Finally, to transition administrators from year to year, we maintain hand-off documents that ensure that all information with regards to a leadership position are transferred both in a meeting between old and new lead as well as in a documentation.

Is your team also interested in technical mentorship?

• are we?

Yes.

If your team is interested in technical mentorship, which disciplines or expertise are you interested in?

• what do we even want then?

• Control systems

• Firmware