CAMPUS FEATURE
Eagles Reporting for Duty Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) is a four-year college elective program that trains students to become Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine or Space Force officers. Each program offers its students a chance to develop skills for success needed in both the military and civilian worlds. Students are often awarded ROTC scholarships that will cover all or part of tuition, fees and book costs. They are also eligible to take part in Project Global Office, or Project GO, an eight-week intensive language and cultural immersion program.
daytonabeach.erau.edu/rotc
FUELING THE FUTURE? WE ROCK IT!
Aerospace Engineering students Alex Clay and Samir Ahmed have spent the past four years at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University manufacturing complex liquid-propellant rocket engines. Now, as they near graduation, there is one last thing they’d like to do: Prepare for ignition. Along with fellow members of the university’s Experimental Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (ERPL), the two have built a state-of-the-art fuel-feed system in hopes of accomplishing that very goal. If successful, the hardware will offer future generations of rocketry students a safe and consistent way to field test their designs — which, according to sophomore Aerospace Engineering student Taylor Koehn, is currently the “most significant bottleneck” in the process of engine building. The team’s liquid-propellant engine, or Daytona Beach Propellant Feed System, delivers two propellants at a rocket engine’s desired pressure and flow rates. It can handle extremely cold cryogenic liquid oxygen and high pressures. The system is also capable
of simultaneously processing one ambient propellant, like ethanol, and one cryogenic propellant, like liquid oxygen. “After all our work, for us to see everything run as predicted — that is the most exciting part,” said Ahmed, the team leader and a recent intern with United Launch Alliance’s test propulsion engineering group. The Daytona Beach Propellant Feed System, estimated to cost $35,000, is comprised of multiple valves, regulators, pressure-relief devices, propellant tanks and plumbing, all of which are mounted onto a test stand. The first test fire is scheduled for spring 2024 from Cecil Spaceport in Jacksonville, Florida.
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker