Altair

Altair: The Brightest Star in the Aguila ConstellatioN

Altair was the first block of the Mountain Spirit Project, originally started as a Capstone for the class of 2020. When COVID-19 hit and the project was scrapped, students took it over and continued the Zenith Propulsion legacy.

Zenith Propulsion was the team in charge of Project Altair, who had to abandon the project. They had gotten as far as a cold-flow and had planned to hot-fire by the end of the Spring 2020 semester.

When classes resumed in the Fall of 2020, Mac Boyle worked with two members of the Capstone, Max Kauker and Andrew Lucka, to get Altair launched. They were also joined by Anthony Bernard (former Rocket Development Lab President) and Xander Pickard.

The team continued to work with two original Capstone members. They had fixed faulty systems and replaced parts. By the Fall of 2021, they were cold-flowing again.

To the team’s dismay, the values they were recieving weren’t exactly what they wanted and so, they returned to the AXFAB to keep working.

At this time, Max and Andrew had graduated. As a result, Mac took over as Team Lead and TCON. Kyle Dutcher, Tom DeVries, and Dalton Songer also joined the team, as well as a few ambitous freshmen.

By the spring, they were ready to hot fire. After running out of liquid oxygen during the first hot fire, they successfully hot-fired the next day and got to work on building the airframe. The team had agreed to set a launch date of September 9th and Kyle Dutcher took over as Team Lead.

They worked tirelessly to get ready for FAR. They drove out to the Mojave for launch and when it came down to the button-press, they had to abort due to electrical problems. According to Mac, he flipped the switch right as their allotted time was up and that’s when all the fuel fell out of the rocket and onto the ground.

After working in the lab again to fix their electrical issues, they returned to the Mojave yet again on October 15th. It was then that Altair exploded.

“A small leak through the liquid oxygen (LOX) valve caused the combustion chamber to be filled with gaseous oxygen (GOX) prior to ignition. When the igniter started it combusted the GOX, shooting the igniter out of the nozzle. When propellant flow started it did not immediately ignite, causing the chamber to be filled with a mixture of atomized Jet A and LOX. This mixture quickly found an ignition source and caused an explosion inside the chamber. The damage from the explosion and following fire resulted in irreparable damage to the engine injector plate and carbon fiber airframe.”