In 2023, I led the development of Cuhboom, a subsonic rocket designed to reach 10,000 feet at the Spaceport America Cup. Our team faced challenges with fiberglass manufacturing, mass constraints, and flight performance. I focused on improving manufacturing processes, optimizing vehicle mass properties, and organizing our first successful test launch to validate the design.

Technical Achievements

Flight Precision: Achieved a competition apogee of 9,972 ft, just 28 ft (0.28%) below our 10,000 ft target.

Payload Optimization: Increased allowable payload mass by 26% through mass budgeting, flight simulations, and stability analysis.

Composite Manufacturing: Developed a more repeatable fiberglass airframe manufacturing process using a machined mandrel, Mylar release film, and white lithium grease.

Flight Testing: Led the team's first successful test launch, reaching 9,600 ft and collecting data to refine competition performance.

Recovery System: Recovered the vehicle with its parachutes fully deployed, confirming successful deployment despite the loss of telemetry.

Beyond the Mission

At competition, Cuhboom launched successfully, but a telemetry failure prevented us from locating it. Months later, I returned to New Mexico with a drone and spent five days searching the desert alongside a competition representative. We eventually recovered Cuhboom and brought it home for post-flight inspection and data retrieval.

The recovery reignited our team's determination and inspired its successor, Invictus. In 2024, the team received the Nancy Squires Team Spirit Award for its perseverance, presented by the same representative who helped me recover Cuhboom.

Cuhboom remains one of my proudest engineering experiences, not only for its technical performance, but for the lasting impact it had on our team's culture.