High School Rocket Team Looks to Graphite
Imagine you are on a high school rocket team trying to solve engineering problems that have bedeviled, well, rocket scientists for decades. What will you use for rocket propellant, and what kind of rocket engine will you employ? Maybe graphite doesn’t immediately come to mind as a material important to the success of your rocket team, but seniors on a Texas high school rocket team would disagree. This year’s senior class at Fredericksburg High School is working to complete a Goddard-level rocket through the Systems Go program to fly at the White Sands missile range in New Mexico. They have worked hard, done diligent research, and now they have a design currently under assembly. And guess what material will, quite literally, be leading their rocket to victory? You guessed it: graphite.
Rocket Engines, Rocket Propellant, and Newton
This isn’t the first competition for these seniors on the rocket team at Fredericksburg. Last year, their fairly small 7ft. rocket made a respectable showing, and the experience taught the team a lot about assembling a rocket engine and achieving maximum thrust with the proper rocket propellant. Of course, they learned a lot about the fundamentals of physics, like Newton’s third law (you know, the one about actions having equal and opposite reactions). The goal of the team’s rocket this year will be to fly to an altitude of 50,000 ft! That is an even higher altitude than even some college rocket teams attempt. It is so high that the average daytime temperature there is about -60℃. This year’s rocket will be far larger than last year’s. In fact, this year’s rocket will be nearly 25ft. long! This senior class’s previous three years of high school have built up to this year to prepare them for the challenges that building a rocket at this level would entail. This class’s rocket team is small – only eight students – and they have split into mini-groups to develop different parts of the rocket and focus their attention on the best outcome. The team’s nozzle group, Jace Granville and Aaliyah Aleman Saldana, have been working hard over the past months to ensure the utmost success.
Graphite’s Role in Rockets
The research conducted by Jace and Aaliyah in the early stages of the rocket’s development led to the decision to utilize graphite as the nozzle material. Graphite’s high-temperature resistance and thermal conductivity make it an obvious choice for the nozzle, as did the team’s experience building last year’s rocket. Graphite does, indeed, feature in many advanced rocket’s designs for similar reasons. Graphite is also exceptionally resistant to corrosion. As we described in an earlier blog, “Even the acidic and volatile byproducts of an ammonium perchlorate composite rocket propellant will not deteriorate [graphite].” We are so excited to see this year’s team put their rocket, with its graphite nozzle, to the test and fly it as high as it can go. The whole team at Semco is rooting for the Fredericksburg High School senior rocket team as they pursue glory in New Mexico this year. This story serves as another reminder that when there is an engineering or machining problem that requires a lightweight, strong material that is abundant and easily machinable, inert and heat-resistant, graphite usually fits the bill.