{"id":117905,"date":"2022-05-25T15:56:45","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T19:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=117905"},"modified":"2022-11-09T16:24:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T21:24:00","slug":"lift-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2022\/05\/25\/lift-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Lift Off!"},"content":{"rendered":"

How a scrappy student club launched dozens of ENG alums into the aerospace industry<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Patrick L. Kennedy<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you erred as an undergrad and a half-ton, flammable-fuel-filled metal canister exploded as a result, requiring the services of the local fire department, you might want to leave that incident off your r\u00e9sum\u00e9. That is, unless you were an undergrad engaged in rocketry, where failure is an integral part of the process.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the Boston University Rocket Propulsion Group (BURPG) hatched a bold plan to launch a 35-foot rocket called Starscraper <\/em>more than 62 miles into the sky, becoming the first student club to crack the Karman line, sending a vehicle into outer space. In 2015, the rocket blew up during a test.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s efforts\u2014and the venture\u2019s fiery exclamation point\u2014made a splash in Hub news. For example, a Boston Globe <\/em>article from January 2015 featured the director, Armor Harris (ENG\u201915), and led with a photo of Doug Lescarbeau (ENG\u201918), Mehmet Akbulut (ENG\u201916), Joe Beaupre (ENG\u201917) and Jeremy Pedro (ENG\u201917) checking a rocket motor\u2019s nozzle.<\/p>\n

That was a few months before Starscraper <\/em>burst and burned, dashing the students\u2019 dreams. And that <\/em>was seven years ago.<\/p>\n

So where are they now? Mostly, working in rocketry.<\/p>\n

Harris is director of engineering for SpaceX\u2019s Starlink satellite bus. Lescarbeau also works on Starlink, as a mechanical design engineer in devel\u00adopment. Beaupre is a launch engineer on SpaceX\u2019s Dragon <\/em>rocket. Pedro is lead propulsion engineer on SpaceX\u2019s Falcon <\/em>rocket.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just a handful. Most of the core group from that era of BURPG found work in the aerospace industry. Indeed, scores of BURPG alumni\u2014ranging from its 2002 founding to the present\u2014are employed not only in big companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Boeing, but also in ABL Space Systems and other start-ups that specialize in satellite launch vehicles, rocket parts and other aerospace essentials.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an impressive showing for a club that doesn\u2019t enjoy access to launch sites in remote areas, or warm winters, as some other collegiate rocketry clubs do. But maybe those headwinds\u2014and the mishaps\u2014helped make the BU rocketeers better engineers.<\/p>\n

The pioneer<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
\"\"
Luke Colby in Triton workshop<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Luke Colby (ENG\u201903) founded the BU Rocket Team\u2014now known as BURPG\u2014in 2002. Colby had wanted to work on rockets since age two and had built and tested a rocket engine in high school.He relished the challenge of turning those dreams into mathe\u00admatically airtight, three-dimensional metal vessels with thousands of working parts. He wasn\u2019t afraid to slog through the requisite stages, crafting a stable combustion chamber, high-pressure fuel tanks, an aerodynamic vehicle and a parachute system to bring it safely back to Earth.<\/p>\n

“One thing that makes it so difficult is the level of perfection that\u2019s required,\u201d says Colby.\u00a0\u201cNinety-nine percent would be plenty good enough for a car; it\u2019s not with what we do.\u201d<\/span><\/h5>\n

At BU, Colby and his new rocket club garnered industry funding and built a solid fuel motor and a 12-foot-long rocket. For red-tape reasons, the students had to install a commercially available engine in the rocket rather than use their own experimental motor, but doing that allowed them to launch the vehicle from the airfield of a local amateur rocketry club.<\/p>\n

The rocket flew 3,000 feet in the air\u2014not the altitude the BU-designed engine would have achieved, Colby confides, \u201cbut it was still a thrill.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduation, Colby moved to California to work for Scaled Composites, serving as technical lead on SpaceShipTwo<\/em>, Virgin Galactic\u2019s suborbital space plane. Over the next few years, several other BU Rocket Team alumni joined then-fledgling private space companies such as SpaceX.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the BU rocket club carried on\u2014for a time with Luke Colby\u2019s younger brother, Aaron Colby (ENG\u201908), at the helm. How\u00adever, the club had to limit its ambitions once the amateur club with the airfield closed. The next nearest launch site was in Virginia.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s been an ongoing struggle for the BU club, says Master Lecturer Caleb Farny (ME<\/a>), associate chair for undergraduate pro\u00adgrams and the club\u2019s faculty advisor. Never mind a launch site\u2014even a place to hold a stationary fire test is hard to come by in the densely inhabited Boston area. After much searching, Farny was able to locate a test site in Sudbury, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

At about this time, Harris arrived in Boston with a grand vision.<\/p>\n

A fire lit<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
\"\"
Armor Harris (ENG’15)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Harris caught the rocket bug at age six. \u201cI got a model rocket, thought it was the coolest thing ever and away we went,\u201d he says. As a teenager in eastern Oregon, \u201cI would work a summer job to make some funds, use those funds to build a project for that year, then go out in the desert the next summer to try to launch it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a sophomore mechanical engineering major at BU, Harris took over as director of the team, which he renamed BURPG. He proposed an ambitious plan to build a rocket every year for three years, culminating in the 35-foot Starscraper<\/em>. After testing it in Sudbury, if all went well, the students hoped they would travel to the Nevada desert in 2015, launch the rocket, and make history.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just a blast,\u201d Harris says, recalling those efforts. \u201cWe were fortunate to get a really talented group of students together. I think the talent exists with ENG students every year; you\u2019ve just got to ignite it. We probably had 20 people who for the better part of three years spent every waking hour on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Drew Kelley (ENG’14)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Drew Kelley (ENG\u201914) remembers the excitement and cama\u00adraderie of a multidisciplinary team stretching themselves as they strove toward an impossible goal. A computer engineering major, Kelley handled avionics. \u201cI wrote all of the software we used to operate the vehicle,\u201d Kelley says. \u201cSo, the data acquisition software, the sequencing software\u2014all of the stuff we would use to conduct hot fire tests.\u201d<\/p>\n

The appeal of rocketry is twofold, says Kelley. \u201cInitially, rocket engines are loud,\u201d he laughs. \u201cThere\u2019s just something about hearing one start up and knowing that you were responsible for making that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than that, though, Kelley realized, \u201cWhat folks do in the space industry is solve technical problems you don\u2019t experience anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lescarbeau was also drawn to rocketry by its technically chal\u00adlenging and viscerally exciting aspects. A mechanical engineering major, he joined BURPG as a freshman, when Harris was a senior. \u201cWe\u2019d go out to this sandpit and fire a rocket engine,\u201d Lescarbeau recalls. \u201cAs an 18-year-old, it makes a big impression on you: \u2018Oh, my God, it\u2019s a large fireball, and it\u2019s very loud!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Not a question of if<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

To build a rocket capable of flight, the student team had to gain a mastery of structural engineering, flight dynamics, avionics and fluid dynamics. They had to solve a host of unique problems, like the fact that the fuel weighs many factors more than the rocket itself.<\/p>\n

Besides the technical challenges, they took on myriad man\u00adagement and administrative tasks, like fundraising, insurance and regulatory paperwork\u2014plus grunt work, like digging the foundation for a test stand.<\/p>\n

Oftentimes, after the students rented a U-Haul van, drove to Sudbury, and spent hours setting up the rocket, some technical glitch would scotch the whole test.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Lescarbeau thought was happening on the day of Starscraper<\/em>\u2019s last fire test, in May 2015. \u201cThe initial start sequence failed, and we knew we had to abort the test,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was kinda, \u2018Aw, this is anticlimactic.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then it exploded, and it was, \u2018Well, that was climactic!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet such failures are not a bug but a feature of the iterative engineering process.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little heartbreaking to spend a thousand hours on a thing and then watch it explode,\u201d says Lescarbeau. \u201cBut it happens. You can make another one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one thing I don\u2019t think is highlighted enough in engineer\u00ading,\u201d says Kelley.\u00a0\u201cYou are going to fail. It\u2019s not a question of if, it\u2019s when.\u00a0But there are a lot of positives that you can take away from failure.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Into the future<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
\"\"
“The Blue Moon lander is the first step in Blue Origin’s long-term mission to preserve Earth by moving heavy industry off planet,” says Kelley.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of those positives? Experience that was directly applicable to their careers, and the networking and internships that enabled them to launch those careers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey learned along the way, made connections and put their engineering education to work,\u201d says Farny. \u201cThat, to me, is the real purpose of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris directs the engineering of what he calls a \u201cridiculously ambitious\u201d project at SpaceX. Starlink is a network of small satel\u00adlites\u2014currently numbering 1,600, with thousands more planned\u2014in low Earth orbit, aiming to provide internet service in remote regions all around the globe, closing the digital divide.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Successful BURPG alums, says Elysse Lescarbeau (ENG\u201921), are those \u201cwho want to do big things and advance humanity in whatever way they can.\u201d<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kelley works at Blue Origin, leading the avionics team for the Blue Moon lander program, the first step in Blue Origin\u2019s long-term vision: \u201cWe\u2019re focused on what it would take to preserve Earth\u2014for example, moving heavy industry off planet. That really resonates with me and with the idea of the Societal Engineer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lescarbeau works on Starlink with Harris. \u201cHe\u2019s my boss\u2019s boss,\u201d says Lescarbeau, who has been working to dim the brightness of Starlink satellites in the night sky.<\/p>\n

Doug Lescarbeau\u2019s sister Elysse Lescarbeau (ENG\u201921) joined him at SpaceX. The siblings overlapped at BURPG when Doug was a senior and director of the club and Elysse was starting at ENG as a LEAP graduate student.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Justin Fiaschetti (ENG\u201921) and Austin Briggs (ENG\u201921) cofounded Inversion Space.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Later, working as a propulsion development engineer on SpaceX\u2019s Merlin <\/em>rocket engine, Elysse was responsible for increas\u00ading the life span of the thrust chamber assembly. One of her motiva\u00adtions for getting into the field was to be a woman in engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s super important to have those diverse perspectives and get more badass ladies into rocketry,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

All told, at least two dozen ENG grads work at SpaceX, and the company built the rocket that sent another ENG alum, astronaut Robert Hines, to the International Space Station<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not all BURPG alumni who land in the aerospace industry work for the big companies. Justin Fiaschetti (ENG\u201921) and Austin Briggs (ENG\u201921) cofounded Inversion Space<\/a>, with the goal of building the first high-cadence return spacecraft for the commercial and defense industries. The start-up raised $10 million in seed funding last fall to develop their reentry capsule.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Thompson Cragwell (ENG’18)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cBeing treasurer and then vice director [of BURPG] taught me how to manage teams, which was good training for the start-up world,\u201d says Fiaschetti. \u201cIt\u2019s really about inspiring people and find\u00ading how to get the best out of everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson Cragwell (ENG\u201918) works for a small company within a larger corporation. He\u2019s a spacecraft mechanical engineer at Millennium Space Systems, a subsidiary of Boeing Space and Launch. Like Kelley, Cragwell was involved in both BURPG and the BU Satellite Program, which recently launched a satellite<\/a> to moni\u00adtor the Earth\u2019s magnetosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spent a lot of time machining parts in EPIC,\u201d says Cragwell. \u201cIt gave me a good sense of design practice and feasibility in manu\u00adfacturing. Because you can design a perfect shape in the computer world, but it has to be built in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Full circle<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

Colby says that\u2019s the value to students of hands-on projects. \u201cIn a world where we increasingly just sit in front of a computer all day, the opportunity for kids to actually get to work on something physi\u00adcal and build and test it is very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
A rocket valve designed and manufactured at Triton.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After ten years in California, Colby returned to Massachusetts and founded his own advanced manufacturing start-up, Triton Space Technologies, supplying complex valves and other compo\u00adnents to \u201call the big companies you\u2019ve heard of,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Colby also donated a valve to BURPG for its Starscraper <\/em>rocket, and he is one of several alumni who often return to review the designs of current BURPG projects. \u201cI\u2019m very proud of them and pleased to see that 20 years later, they\u2019re still going,\u201d says Colby.<\/p>\n

Last fall, Harris visited the BURPG workshop to look over designs and parts for the students\u2019 planned Pursuit <\/em>rocket. Harris suggested the team use less expensive materials, making future fail\u00adures more economically palatable, recalls Jack Sullivan (ENG\u201923), this year\u2019s BURPG student director.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sophia Delia (ENG’23), Jack Sullivan (ENG’23), and Armor Harris (ENG’15) in the BURPG workshop.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe are taking that advice,\u201d says Sullivan, who adds that Harris provided a morale boost by helping them reframe their notion of a test failure. \u201cAs Armor put it, SpaceX blows up engines all the time, and they\u2019re professionals with way more money and way more time than us.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his visit to campus, Harris also guest-lectured a mechan\u00adical engineering class and took questions. One student asked, \u201cWhat experiences or things did you learn from the BU rocket club that you\u2019ve found applicable to your work at SpaceX?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything,\u201d replied Harris. \u201cThe thing you learn in classrooms is how to think like an engineer, how to deductively solve problems, how to break things down and think your way through them. That is what stays with you.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut all of the real engineering skills come from doing projects,\u201d he added. \u201cDesign, build and test as many things as you can while you\u2019re in school, because that\u2019s the stuff that directly translates to how successful you\u2019re going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
From left, Doug Lescarbeau (ENG’18), Tom Halstead (ENG\u201916), Joe Beaupre (ENG\u201917) and Jarrod Risley (ENG\u201917) in the BURPG workshop in 2014.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kelley said he draws on his BURPG experience \u201call the time\u201d at Blue Origin. \u201cElectrical and computer engineers don\u2019t generally get a whole lot of exposure to how fluid systems work or how rocket engines work. But it\u2019s really important for someone in my field to be able to go have that conversation with the people designing our landing engines or the people designing our propellant manage\u00adment systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lescarbeau brings it back to the setbacks that rocket engineers suffer with painful regularity on their way to success.<\/p>\n

\u201cLearning to cope with prob\u00adlems is maybe the best lesson that came out of [BURPG],\u201d he said. \u201cPhysics is the real world and crazy things can happen, and you\u2019ve got to roll with the punches. If you let the difficulties break you, then you can\u2019t make forward progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX rocket launch photos courtesy of SpaceX. Blue Moon lander<\/em> image courtesy of Blue Origin. Alumni photos courtesy of Luke Colby, Thompson Cragwell, Justin Fiaschetti, Drew Kelley, and Elysse Lescarbeau.<\/em><\/p>\n

This story originally appeared in the spring 2022 issue of<\/em> ENGineer<\/a>, the alumni magazine of the Boston University College of Engineering<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a scrappy student club launched dozens of ENG alums into the aerospace industry By Patrick L. Kennedy If you erred as an undergrad and a half-ton, flammable-fuel-filled metal canister exploded as a result, requiring the services of the local fire department, you might want to leave that incident off your r\u00e9sum\u00e9. That is, unless […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2662,"featured_media":122352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236],"tags":[787,327,788,789],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117905"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117905"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133203,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117905\/revisions\/133203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}