Nurturing Our Rocket Space Workforce at the United States Air Force Academy

The Space Systems Research Center at the United States Air Force Academy is building a cadre of rocket space professionals “one cadet at a time.” Its motto and aim is for cadets to “Learn Space by Doing Space.” Approximately one half of the cadets majoring in astronautical engineering perform a one year long capstone program of the design, fabrication, test and launch of a sounding rocket (the FalconLAUNCH program). This year’s rocket, FalconLAUNCH-3, launched in April, 2005. This was the preliminary test of the rocket design for FalconLAUNCH-4, scheduled for a 2006 launch from San Nicolas Island, California, carrying a 5-kg payload to 100,000 meters. This program is modeled like any Air Force program, with the cadets acting as the contractor, and the faculty and Air Force funding agencies acting as the Air Force Manager. The program has approximately 20 students with five or six faculty mentors. The program is multi-disciplinary, requiring cadets to use skills learned in physics, electrical engineering, computer science, and management. All of the normal milestones, reviews, presentations, and reports required in an Air Force Program are required of the cadets in the FalconLAUNCH program. The overarching goal is to provide realistic system development and systems engineering experience to future Air Force leaders. While the overall design evolves each year, each class culminates their undergraduate engineering experience with the launch of their rocket. This paper details the development, challenges, and advantages of conducting an undergraduate sounding rocket program and details the design, construction, testing and the April 2005 launch of FalconLAUNCH-3.