In This Edition

Exploring the Cosmos

Part 1: Learning from the Cosmos

Part 2: Going in to Space

Part 3: Tools of Discovery

Questions & Answers

Prof. Claude Canizares

Prof. Dava Newman, SM '89, PhD '92

Cady Coleman '83

Paul Filmer, PhD '92

Christopher Carr '99

Shana Diez '02

Carl Dietrich '99

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Carl Dietrich '99
Carl Dietrich is a graduate student in aeronautics and astronautics. He is founder/director of the MIT Rocket Team and has developed a new type of rocket engine currently being tested by the team.

How did the Cheap Access to Space (CATS) Prize inspire the founding of the MIT Rocket Team in 1998?

A friend of mine told me about the $250,000 prize for the first amateur group to launch a 2 kg payload to an altitude of 200 km during the summer of 1998. I didn't think much of it at the time since the goal had already been accomplished many times by professionals. Later that fall I had an idea for a new type of rocket engine one day at the end of Prof. Manuel Martinez-Sanchez's rocket propulsion class. I told him about it, and he said that it just might work. The CATS Prize seemed like the perfect excuse to form a student group to try to accomplish both goals: develop a new type of rocket engine and become the first amateur group to launch a rocket into space.

Is 2002 the year the team will reach its goal of becoming the first student group to launch a rocket into space?

We hope so, but it depends on many factors which are hard to predict; we're starting from scratch, so there's a lot of learning going on during the development of this vehicle.

What new aerospace technologies are you and the other 50 or so Rocket team members pioneering that could lead to cheaper launch costs?

The big new technology is the rocket engine. The rocket engine is one of the most expensive components of a launch vehicle. Our engine provides all of the performance benefits of a complicated, turbo-pump-pressurized rocket engine but does it without the expense of developing and manufacturing a turbo-pump. The second build of our rocket engine will cost less than $10K, which is peanuts in aerospace terms (of course it helps that all the design and assembly labor is volunteer). This low cost allows us to do a lot of work on the limited budget of a student project. Other new technologies include the implementation of a carbon-fiber composite airframe to reduce structural weight and a virtual reality payload to give a person on the ground a real feel for what it would be like to launch into space on our rocket.

More information about the project is available at http://web.mit.edu/cats/www/.

Professor Claude Canizares "Chandra and XMM-Newton are in fact very complementary missions, each with significant strengths and some weaknesses." more...

Professor Dava Newman, SM '89, PhD '92 "Using the engineering fundamentals of control and dynamics we are able to model astronaut performance during microgravity and partial gravity (lunar and Martian) extravehicular activity (EVA) tasks." more...

Cady Coleman '83 "When you go to space, you always bring a lot of people with you in spirit…" more...

Paul Filmer, PhD '92 "The climax of the training was a flight of ten parabolic arcs aboard the enormous Ilyushin 76 training aircraft, which gave us a brief taste of zero-gravity, much to the delight of our inner ears." more...

Christopher Carr '99 "The exploration of Mars is a grand human adventure. Exploring Mars is like stepping forward or backward in time to an alternate Earth." more...

Shana Diez '02 "For me space is irresistible. The challenge is so great, and the possibilities seemingly endless." more...

Carl Dietrich '99 "Our engine provides all of the performance benefits of a complicated, turbo-pump-pressurized rocket engine but does it without the expense of developing and manufacturing a turbo-pump." more...