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Palouse Aerospace is WSU Pullman's rocketry and aviation engineering club! Formerly known as AIAA/WSU Aerospace Club, we are ready to embark on a new journey after these past few years since the pandemic.
Last June, we had a successful launch and an impressive showing at Spaceport America Cup 2023 - the world's largest rocket engineering competition. Now, we seek to improve on this performance, so support us and help us get to Spaceport America Cup 2024!
From paper planes to hydrogen powered drones, Palouse Aerospace offers students the opportunity to get hands-on experience in a wide-ranging discipline. The club currently consists of some 30 driven, undergraduate engineering students with a passion for aerospace. Our goal as a club is to provide WSU students with hands-on engineering experience, giving them a chance to apply classwork and develop skills that they can apply within industry to solve practical, real-world problems.
HISTORY
Founded in 1995, we first established ourselves as a student branch of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Initially competing in the AIAA’s Design, Build, Fly airplane engineering competition. Around 2014 we began our foray into rocketry. We now regularly attend the Spaceport America Cup - the world’s largest rocket engineering competition. We’re also committed to research projects in cooperation with various on-campus research laboratories and industry partners.
With the more recent adoption of our new name and logo comes the beginning of a new era. Having an established, rich, history we feel it is now appropriate for our organization to tackle more ambitious goals and projects. Our objective for 2023 - 2024 is to lay the framework for our club to succeed as it elects to take on these exciting, new challenges. As such, we expect to see a mass increase in club membership in the next few years. We have already restructured our leadership and organizational policies to best suit our ambitions.
We’ll achieve these objectives through developing a robust curriculum and knowledge base for future cohorts of our club to rapidly learn from, so that members are able to contribute to projects earlier in their studies. Most crucial to our objective, we seek to establish new partnerships to help support these efforts. This is, truly, a pivotal moment in the history of our club and we hope to see you come along for the journey!
CURRENT PROJECTS
At Palouse Aerospace, students have the opportunity to see their projects evolve through the entire engineering design process. All students are encouraged to participate throughout every phase including design, manufacturing, testing, and iteration.
Currently under development by the Plane Team is a multipurpose Cargo Plane! The goal for the cargo plane project is to carry a payload of up to 10 pounds to altitudes of 400 ft. This project is for learning composite construction techniques and general model aircraft skills. The dual fuselage under the wing center makes for a lightweight plane capable of carrying cargo with odd geometries.
The wing, tail, and boom were completed at the end of the Spring 2023 semester. This semester the team molded the fuselages, assembled the airplane, and installed the motors. Next up is wiring, landing gear, and the flight controller setup before the maiden flight.
Palouse Aerospace regularly competes at Spaceport America Cup - the world’s largest rocket engineering competition. Rocket team members have the opportunity to represent Washington State University and compete against some of the world’s best universities. The competition is held annually in the New Mexico desert at the Spaceport America Vertical Launch Site. Nearly 6,000 students from across 24 different countries participated in the 2023 competition. Our rocket Crimson Arrow is the result of several months’ work and performed spectacularly, reaching an altitude of 8,200 feet AGL and flawless performance of all subsystems. Our preparedness led to a successful recovery with no damage to the airframe and resulted in a spectacular first appearance as Palouse Aerospace!
Nothing we do is possible without the generous help and support from our amazing sponsors and donors. By supporting Palouse Aerospace, you will have a positive impact on the learning of our world’s next generation of engineers. Help promote STEM education by providing students with practical skills & experience!
The tiny parts and other hardware that keep our projects in one piece. Whether its a small part or a big part, it is a part we need! Every piece helps us build an awesome rocket or plane!
This is roughly the cost for a roll of 3D-Printer filament. We use 3D-Printed parts in everything from testing prototype designs to custom mounts for onboard computers and such.
This will go a long way for specialty plane parts, this could be anything from high torque servo motors to motor speed controllers or printed circuit boards and batteries. These parts will be put to good use!
$100 dollars just about covers the cost of a single J180 rocket motor, while providing some left-over funds to put towards mounting said motor. These solid rocket motors will be used to help teach some of our newer members the basics of rocketry, through having them design, build and launch their own high-power rockets!
This will help us purchase materials such as carbon fiber, fiberglass, or epoxy resin. Composites are an integral part of what we do and are used most commonly in our rocket body tubes or airplane wings and fuselages.
Help support some of our largest projects: a solar plane with integrated solar cells, our next appearance at Spaceport America Cup 2024, and the development of our very own Hybrid Rocket Engines!
