DETAILS
The Mission
The Humphrey and Prudence Trickelbank Foundation was established to support disaster relief activities around the world. The Foundation is considering a major investment to create a rapid reaction satellite constellation to assist relief efforts around the world. For political reasons, the system is not to be prepositioned in orbit and will only be deployed in the event of a major natural disaster (within 24 hours) The feasibility and expected cost of the constellation. Final responses to this RFP should describe the preliminary design of the proposed system icluding expected performance, development schedule, and ROM cost.
The Class of 2016-2017
The best year, the one filled with geniuses that can take on this beast of a class. In spacecraft design the professor, and his industry network, throw all their combined years of experience into a challenge that will battle harden students into peak performance to enter the aerospace world and excel with all that we have learned!
Where We Are
Systems Requirement Review
For the first 6 weeks of the quarter the class was divided into 14 groups of 4-5 people each to investigate the viability of the requirements outlined by the Tricklebank Foundation. Each team needed to come up with a high level design without "going into the weeds" in order to see how each of us would approach some of the big trades required by the request for proposal. This process was intended to be as true to life as possible by requiring teams to send notices of intent, and submit questions and requirement pushbacks by certain deadlines. At the end of this period of the class each team had to give a 15 minute presentation to the Trickelbank Foundation and a member of each team about the team's chosen design.
Preliminary Design Review
For the last 4 weeks of the quarter the class was divided into 2 groups of about 25 people each to create a more comprehensive design. The increase in "horsepower" for each subsystem allowed us to do even more research, calculations, and trades to design everything from the subsystem level while simultaneously designing at the system level to make sure that all subsystems would integrate into a functional satellite constellation. Between the two sections there was significant variations in design decisions, but the structure and process was similar with both teams breaking up the system into 5 parts: system architecture, imaging payload, communications payload/support, orbits, and launch. The major goal of this period of the class was to make rational trades while avoiding personal biases, maintaining a "big picture" view, and most importantly organizing documentation of all decisions and research so that if anything needs to change in the future everybody (not just the people who originally made the decision) knows how it will effect every part of the design. At the end of the quarter each team gave a 45 minute presentation to the Trickelbank Foundation, professors, and grad students who were encouraged to find problems in the design and interrupt during the presentations to test our ability to adapt and address concerns without guessing, or conflicting viewpoints between teammates.
Our Trip to Space Systems/Loral
In the Winter quarter the teams from the previous quarter were disbanded to form a new megagroup that can investigate and design even further. February 3rd 2017
Our Trip to Northrop Grumman
In the Winter quarter the teams from the previous quarter were disbanded to form a new megagroup that can investigate and design even further. March 17th 2017
Our Trip to Lockheed Martin
In the Spring quarter the teams from the previous quarter are making the final push to produce a full feasibility study for Symposium. April 14th 2017
Our Trip to Boeing
In the Spring quarter the teams from the previous quarter are making the final push to produce a full feasibility study for Symposium. May 19th 2017
Symposium!
After 9 months of amazing work from 57 brilliant engineers the final design of our constellation was presented to an industry board of 20 judges from companies including JPL, SpaceX, and the Air Force! The design was picked apart by experts for 2 days, over 10 hours, on everything from satellite communications to launch operations, but in the end the design was praised for its success and creativity in meeting the ridiculous requirements. So congratulations to the Cal Poly class of 2017 Spacecraft Design! We survived and created something we can all be proud of; continue to grow, learn, and take the world to infinity and beyond.