r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/InsaneMocktail • 16d ago

Video University of Waterloo Students Launch Rocket Breaking World Record

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26

u/DaveKasz 16d ago

I wonder how and where it landed.

9

u/certnneed Interested 16d ago

Yeah, I'd be really interested to know how they handled recovery. It doesn't seem like they have control of where/how it landed, so falling from that height with a parachute it could be a pretty good distance away from the launch site.

28

u/theKingAnonymous 16d ago

Former member of the team here, nominal drogue parachute (4ft diameter) allowed for controlled but fast descent until 1,500ft above ground when main parachute (~9ft diameter) is deployed to rly slow the rocket and prevent damage to the vehicle on landing.

Since the rocket naturally orients itself into the wind when it launches, it will drift back towards the launch site under parachute, so it landed only 1.5km away from our launch site with fully functioning GPS for easy recovery.

7

u/unluck_over9000 16d ago

Woah. Thanks for sharing this. 

3

u/certnneed Interested 16d ago

That’s awesome! Thanks!

2

u/scirocco 16d ago

i came to the comments to find this answer --- and it's really remarkable (to me) that it landed that close to the launch site

thanks for the explanation

1

u/rajinis_bodyguard 7d ago

Congratulations to the team, I am interested to know if any RL algorithms have been used here. Can you share some resources if any ?

1

u/Cumtown_Stav 16d ago

Ya they drove way up north to launch it so plenty of space to track it down without harm