RICE Hydro, Inc. Supporting STEM Education Reaching for the Stars
Submitted by Carson Now Reader on Wed, 07/28/2021 - 11:15am
RICE Hydro, Inc. support yields successful firing of most powerful full scale rocket engine ever built by students. The Carson City company donated much needed testing equipment to the Space Concordia Rocketry Division (SCRD) student team from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. On June 17, 2021, students ignited their experimental liquid-propelled rocket engine, called Stewart, and produced a record-shattering 35kN of thrust.
Proponents of STEM education throughout North America, RICE Hydro, Inc. provided the program with invaluable mentoring and an MTP-15 Manual Hand Operated Hydrostatic Test Pump. These contributions assisted the university’s program in participating in the Base11 Competition, a multi-phase program in which university students compete to design, build, and launch a liquid-propelled, single-stage rocket to an altitude of 100 kilometers (the Karman Line) by December 30, 2021. A purse of $1 million prize is up for grabs. The June engine firing is one of the many milestones required for the final phase of the competition at year’s end.
To date, SCRD has obtained several wins at the Base11 Competition including Second Place in the Phase 1 Preliminary Design Review (PDR) held at Cal-Tech in June 2019, and a First Place in the Base11 Critical design review in February of 2021. Additionally, they were the only team to succeed in developing a rocket and a full-thrust flight engine. Fifty universities are competing including: University of Michigan, the University of British Columbia, Purdue University, and the University of Texas.
The Base11 Space Challenge program’s mission is to dramatically increase the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent in the United States and Canada. Additionally, the program strives to promote a greater representation and inclusion of women and minorities within the STEM fields while empowering the future workforce with the education and skill-training necessary for jobs in the aerospace and related industries.
Concordia University and their Space Concordia program aims to teach and train young scientists and engineers through hands-on work and encourages an attitude of persistence and collaboration.
