IREC Review

"We are Buckeye Space Launch Initiative (BSLI). The primary rocketry team at Ohio State. Our goal is to teach students about high-power rocketry and compete in the annual IREC 30K SRAD competition, the annual NASA SLI, and research liquid rocketry for future projects. At BSLI IREC, our biggest accomplishment was winning the 30K category in 2017. Recently, our successful student-designed single separation dual deployment system has been a major success by working flawlessly for the past three years straight. We have used the same Rocketman Parabolic parachute for all these flights and ejection tests. It has survived some serious punishment, and it is still flying! We have experienced some major hurdles in the past few years since the COVID-19 pandemic, including losses of equipment due to severe steam leaks in our building and a major fire that broke out in an adjacent lab, causing us to cease work. We have overcome these hurdles by sticking together as a team and striving to push forward in our shared love of rocketry. 

The NASA SLI team participates in NASA’s yearly Student Launch Initiative Challenge. This team’s biggest accomplishment is regularly placing in the top 20 out of up to 100 teams in these yearly challenges. Our goal is not only to reach an altitude specified by the team before the building process, but also to complete a payload challenge set by NASA. Some amazing payload challenges completed with Rocketman parachutes include a helicopter device that landed separately from the rocket and a radio transmission system that transferred data after landing. For this team, we routinely use the same Rocketman parachutes in a dual deployment recovery system as well, with no mishaps since the team’s inception (2019). Rocketman’s 8ft parachute is used for the main, and a 2ft parachute is used for drogue.”

Cheers and happy flying!
-Calvin Beall