purdue bell tower rocket

8:57 AM on Wednesday, December 9th, 2020 (West Lafayette, IN)

It’s finals week here at Purdue and I’m officially done! Well, nearly that is, as I technically have 1 hour and 3 minutes left to resubmit a take-home math final I had that I finished last night. In my mind, the semester is over so I thought I would start off by recounting the celebratory rocket launch that occurred this weekend, at a location in West Lafayette I refer to as Rocket Field:

Overall a successful launch! The Walmart Bag Recovery System(WBRS) worked better than expected, and brought the rocket down slower than it would have come down had there been no parachute(damages were still sustained). I designed the rocket in Fusion 360 around the central idea of using one of the copious amount of paper towel tubes I have amassed at my apartment this semester. It consists of 3 parts: a motor mount that holds an Estes D12-5 motor, a base shaped like the bottom of the Purdue Bell Tower with stabilizing fins and an integrated launch rod holder, and a Bell Tower shaped nose cone. I then 3D printed all the parts on my Ender3 with lovely bright orange PLA filament. The whole thing is held together with not-so-precisely-measured friction fit joints, and uses rubber banks and string to secure the WBRS to the body. While it resulted in some slight procrastination during dead week, I am very happy with how it turned out, especially since the the parachute actually deployed. The rocket was also featured on the Purdue CS and Life At Purdue Instagram pages, which was pretty neat! Below is a photo gallery of the rocket: