Seniors form ‘Castle Point Rocketry’

A group of eight seniors this semester have formed a highly-publicized Senior Design project called “Castle Point Rocketry.”

Senior Design is a two semester-long capstone senior design project required for graduation. Many students struggle to find a project in both their field and interest, especially considering the limited number of sponsors.  At the end of the spring semester is the culmination of this experience, the Senior Design Innovation Exposition, where all the projects are shown to the Stevens community and the general public.

Nathan Tahbaz and Monica Traupmann were exploring the Innovation Expo for inspiration but didn’t really see any project they could “foresee [themselves] being passionate about,” according to the members. That’s when Tahbaz and Traupmann proposed a project of designing their own rocket to fire into space.

“We talked a little about what an attainable rocket would look like, and from that point, we started to reach out to rising seniors on campus,” Tahbaz said.

With that, Castle Point Rocketry was established.

Castle Point Rocketry is the name of their project and their team. The team consists of Nathan Tahbaz, Monica Traupmann, Abe Edens, Will Skwirut, Dakota Van Deursen, Tom Flaherty, Faris Ibrahim, and Ben Iofel. Their majors vary from Mechanical, Chemical, and Computer Engineering to Computer Science. Each member has their own official title, but they all “wear many hats.”

Their mission is to “build a suborbital launch vehicle to reach the Karman line,” which lies at an altitude of 330,000 feet above the Earth’s sea level and maintains an atmosphere thin enough to be considered outer space. Starting their Senior Design project at the end of Spring 2018, they plan to be the first college team to send a rocket to that altitude.

Even though the team has only been working on the project for a couple of months, they feel comfortable with their completed preliminary design and will soon begin their manufacturing plan. Castle Point Rocketry recently finished their preliminary design report while maintaining their social media presence in order to gather as much attention as possible. The attention to the project from different people in the industry has allowed them to gather a large amount of funds. 

But where is all the money coming from? The team has met with sponsors and mentors and works with the Office of Alumni Engagement and Development to prepare their crowdfunding campaign. They are currently looking at a budget of a whopping $100,000: a projected 85% will be from corporate sponsors, 5% from the school, and the last 10% will be raised from their crowdfunding campaign. Currently they are 80% funded, but it is hard to tell as of now if their project will put them over budget.

The group spent much of their summer reaching out “to any and all companies in areas relevant to [their] project” in order to gain sponsors, said Tahbaz. Every member of their team called and emailed companies to sell their project to get sponsorships. After pitching their project to President Farvardin, he was able to connect the team to a few more companies to help achieve their budget goal. Since then, the team has been receiving positive feedback and much popularity through social media.

“It’s rewarding to see things go well, but we still have quite a way to go,” Tahbaz said.

Since the start of their project, the team has “held more than 200 hours of meetings and pulled three all-nighters,” Tahbaz said. Castle Point Rocketry tries to meet at least three times a week during the semester and met for 15 hours on a recent Saturday solely to work on their preliminary design report.

Next month, the group plans on launching their crowd-funding campaign. Participants can receive their own team mission patch, get their name printed on the rocket, or even possibly have a plaque sent to space with their name on it. The plaque would be mailed back to them after the launch. Donations will be accepted as well.

Castle Point Rocketry plans on launching their rocket from SpacePort America in New Mexico in June 2019.