Logan Files-OSU Aerospace engineering-week1

Hello, my name is Logan Files and for my internship I was sent to Stillwater, Oklahoma to study aerospace engineering at Oklahoma State University. I am rooming with another pintern, Micah Hoffman, at an apartment near the campus.

Our fist day at the lab, we joined with other high school interns and made a thin sheet of carbon fiber from two carbon fiber fabrics and a fiberglass fabric. I then made an epoxy from resin and hardener that cemented the fabrics together to give it carbon fiber traits. Other students chose to work with fabrics like kevlar instead. The plan was then to test which combinations of the fabrics would be most heat resistant however we were separated from the other interns and given a new project. The project leaders are Meghana Fathepure and Nicco Wang and the goal is to collect solar and weather data by sending small solar panels and other sensors such as a spectrometer to high altitudes via a balloon.

Our first task was to solder wires together that would connect an Arduino. (The picture below is of me soldering.)  We were also tasked with learning more about languages such as Python so we could help program our solar cell.

The second day of the internship we started by taking python lessons most of the morning. We then joined back with the other high schoolers to take a class on drones and flying drones. We learned about importance of center of gravity and how to find it, how to take off and land, what not to do when landing especially, and finally some things about the controllers. Ending the day we were assigned to design a box for our solar cell payload. Micah and I designed a box that would fit the solar panels on the outside, but also provide an angle so the sun could better interact with the panels. The box also needed to be extremely light and insulating as we will be taking the payload up on a balloon to extreme altitudes and the sensors and raspberry pi’s inside need to be kept at a decent temperature in order to function.

(Constructed prototype of styrofoam)

On Wednesday we went to the drone airfield with the other high schoolers and watched them fly the planes they had built before we had arrived. We then went to Oklahoma City to meet other interns. It was good to talk more to Meghana and Nicco and get more comfortable with them on the ride over. In OKC we were supposed to be flying kites with weather sensors attached however there was not enough wind and it was ultimately unsuccessful.

(Kite flying)

Thursday was probably my favorite day of the week as I got to design our box for the solar cell on Solid Works, a software for engineering design that is compatible with tools such as 3D-printers, laser engravers and much more. The box was already built by hand out of styrofoam, however it is good to get a digital copy as well as we will possibly use digital tools to print a more precise box so it is more durable. Using Solid Works was a lot of fun because while I have used somewhat similar softwares, I had never used Solid Works and it was fun to learn a new software. It was also more complex of a design than I had done before as we had 3 different parts and then assembled them together with more complex functions. It was also confusing and fun to get the right angle of chamfer in order to create the right angles and precision of the prism.  A picture of the box so far is shown below.

Friday was also a really fun day as we got to help test the Pluto landing system for NASA’s Pluto Hop Skip and Jump program. This is really cool and new as we have only landed on Mars like this before. It wasn’t our project, however because of Meghana and Nicco we were asked to help test the balloon. We went to the Cat walk of the university’s basketball arena and set up a way to lift and drop the balloon.  It was a lot of stairs, but being up so high as well as being around such a cool project was a ton of fun. I was also able to help fix, film and drop the balloon so I really got to be hands on with it.