On June 16-17, 2015, CU-Boulder hosted a two-day intensive workshop for students from the 2nd annual Colorado Aerospace Internship Experience, coordinated by the Colorado Space Business Roundtable (CSBR). The internship aimed at exposing Colorado high school and college students to aerospace systems and local industry.
Alex Sweetman, a CSBR coordinator for the event, explains, “a special emphasis was placed on recruiting students from ‘the non-front range’ which traditionally don’t have access to aviation and aerospace resources.”
Over the course of the two-week internship, 25 students from around Colorado will tour local aerospace powerhouses, including Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Ball Aerospace, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Boeing, Braxton, United Launch Alliance – and more.
The University of Colorado-Boulder portion of the internship aimed to give students hands-on exposure to “rocket science” through designing, modeling, testing and launching water rockets.
Given an overview of the challenges and commonalities of aerospace systems by Dale Lawrence, AES Associate Professor, the students worked in teams to design water rockets that could travel the maximum distance and height. Before launch, the students modeled their rockets using Matlab, a computational computer program, and conducted static thrust and wind tunnel testing.
Originally a two and half week lab for sophomore CU aerospace engineering students, the water rocket lab was adapted by Trudy Schwartz, AES Lab Manager, into a one and half day immersive engineering experience.
Fisher Darling, a CSBR internship participant and rising junior at Cherry Creek High School, explains the internship’s personal impact:
“Coming in, I was set on studying computer science in college. Aerospace engineering was not on my radar. After this, I am seriously considering double majoring in computer science and aerospace.”
Claire Yang, aerospace undergraduate advisor, explains the value CU sees in facilitating the internship:
“It is really valuable for students to learn about the landscape of the aerospace industry in Colorado. This internship exposes students to a great combination of larger and smaller [aerospace] institutions. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter where these students go to school; they are feeding into the aerospace industry, here in Colorado and elsewhere. We just want them to be involved.”
-Written By: Ari Sandberg, Intern