PSU Magazine Winter 2000

You don 't have to be a rocket scien– tist to do most things in life. One exception is, of course, rocket science. That discipline-or rather a blend of disciplines, from electrical engineer– ing to chemistry to computers-is the focus of a resourceful and very bright group of PSU students who are intent on launching sleek, high-powered, and very technical objects into the strato– sphere. The Portland State Aerospace Society is open to anyone with an interest in rockets and who wants to have fun, says Andrew G reenburg, one of the fo unders. It is made up of students and former students of PSU, a few people from local industry, with a couple of high school participants thrown in for good measure. G reenburg, a 29-year-old graduate student with his own software company, says the idea was hatched over a cup of coffee with a fellow electrical engineer– ing student, Brian O 'Neel, 33. What they had in common was a fascination with rocketry that had its genesis in the space program. "When I was eight or nine, I watched the Apollo and the Soyuz docking on TV. Once I was old enough to choose my own hobbies, this was one of them," says O'Neel. According to G reenburg, that same awe is in all the other members of the growing program. "We're all captured by space and by the image of people walking on the moon . In many ways, we're trying to recapture the sp irit of that pioneering work," he says. Their first step in establishing the Aerospace Society in 1997 was to form a chapter of the AESS-the Aerospace and Electrical Systems Society, which is part of a professional organization for electrical engineers. To do that required finding a faculty adviser. That role was filled by Lee Casperson , a professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics. As luck would have it, Casperson shared the same childhood fasc ination with rockets as G reenburg and O 'Neel. "My brother had a chemistry set in high school, and I used to take advan– tage of it, building small-scale explo– sives," Casperson says. "I made many small rockets. This was a hibernating interest of mine, but the driving force is the students. They're learning far more than me." What separates the Portland State Aerospace Society from other amateur groups is the soph isticated level of technology in its projects. While other groups are satisfied with making a big boom and watching a crude object fly into the sky, the Portland State group is working with complex electronic payloads, called avionics. G reenburg claims the Portland group is the only amateur rocketry organ ization to have manufactured an Inertial Measurement Unit-a device that measures vibration and move– ment, and calculates where the rocket is going. In addition, the group installs video cameras on the rockets them– selves. The group's Web site, http :/ /www.ee. pdx.edu/-aess , has footage from previous launches, as well as detailed drawings and specifications of projects now in the works. Each launch the society has completed has been more technologi– cally advanced than the one before. The first rocket, which was dubbed LVO (Launch Vehicle 0), was 72 inches long with an airframe made of cardboard and fiberglass. It weighed 12.2 pounds, complete with a black and white video camera on board, and reached a height of 1,200 feet when it was launched June 7, 1998. LVl , launched the fo llowing April, was 132 inches long, weighed 46 pounds, had an airframe made of carbon fiber, and rose to an altitude 10 times that of its predecessor. LVl had color video, and was the first to use the Inertial Measurement Unit. Using amateur radios they put together, computerized data sen t from the rocket allowed the ground crew to plot Andrew Greenburg (seated left at the computer), a founder of the student group, is ground control for this launch. its trajectory. Meanwhile, the crew on ground was able to use touch-tone codes to send information back to the rocket. The group plans to launch LVlB– an improved version of LVl - next summer. O ne of the improvements is a WINTER 2000 PSU MAGAZINE 13