Started the day at 4:00am. Clark picked me up at 5:00am and we met Brent at the New Orleans Airport. At 5:30am the airport was packed with LSU fans heading to the game. Clark and Brent flew out early and I waited (and worked) for Chris, Jeff, and Ben to arrive. We left Nola at 10:15am connected in Las Vegas and then flew to Reno and then Seattle. Pretty uneventful trip except that while in Las Vegas, we saw Bridget from the Girls Next Door, as evidenced in this photo. Arrived in Seattle around 7:00 PM Pacific time and took the Air
Link to hotel. Met a cranky Clark and Brent, took a shower and then headed to Icon Grill which was across from the Westin where we were staying. The food was wonderful but I had been up for 24 hours straight. I went back to the Westin after dinner and went to sleep.
September 07, 2009
September 17, 2007
March 13, 2007
HASP—High Altitude Space Balloon Project
The HASP team consists of LSU ME undergraduate students (Jeff Kornuta, Clark McLellan, Henry Hardee, John Dykes, and Stephen Edelblut)
who are active members of the LSU AIAA Student Chapter. The project objective was to design and test an aerospike type of Altitude Compensating Nozzle that can be used by Single Stage to Space Rocket Engines. Because the structural boundary between the core nozzle flow and the surrounding ambient atmosphere is eliminated with aerospike nozzles, they may result in increased engine performance by enabling efficient pressure relaxation between the core flow and ambient air. As such, they are attractive for use with Single Stage to Space Rocket Engines that experience a large range of ambient pressure. Lead by the LSU AIAA Student Chair Jeff Kornuta under the supervision of Mechanical Engineering Professor Shengmin Guo, the HASP team designed, built, and tested a high altitude balloon payload that would compare the overall efficiency of an aerospike nozzle to a conventional converging-diverging nozzle. Taking advantage of existing components such as a paintball tank, solenoid valves, and miniature transducers, as well as fabricating custom elements such as a microcomputer, thrust stand, and nozzles, the team was able to construct a fully
functioning apparatus that would measure different thrusts, various pressures, and temperature. Overall, the HASP Design Project was a success and provided an important insight into the factors involved in using Single Stage to Space Rocket Engines.
Taken from: http://appl003.lsu.edu/mech/mechweb.nsf/$Content/Homepage+Banner+Right/$file/F06%20newsletter.pdf
