Location
Innovation Lab Atrium
Start Date
4-2-2025 10:00 AM
End Date
4-2-2025 11:30 AM
Presentation Date
2 April 2025, 10:00am - 11:30am
Biography
Nick Graham is a senior aerospace engineering major at Missouri S&T. He has focused on propulsion work, serving as a technical lead and then chief engineer of the Missouri S&T liquid rocket design team helping to fire the school's first liquid bipropellant rocket engine 11 times during the 2022-2023 school year and bringing the group to the launch rail for the first time, and now serves as an advising member to the team. Additionally, he launched the school's first liquid bi-propellant rocket in April 2024. He has past experience working on propulsion and test engineering projects at the NASA White Sands Test Facility, Axiom Space, and Firefly Aerospace. After graduation, Nick hopes to continue to work on rocket propulsion, helping to develop technology to increase access to space and capabilities when there.
Meeting Name
2025 - Miners Solving for Tomorrow Research Conference
Department(s)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Document Type
Poster
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
event
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2025 Nicholas Graham, All rights reserved
Included in
Design of a High Performance, Affordable, Liquid Bi-Propellant Sounding Rocket Leveraging Additive Manufacturing and a Novel Injector Design
Innovation Lab Atrium
Comments
Abstract:
Increasing global tensions have led to higher demand for solid rocket motors for defense purposes, this opens a potential market segment for low marginal cost, simple liquid bipropellant powered rockets. The rocket presented is capable of delivering a maximum payload of 4 lbm to 50,000 feet or lighter payloads up to 90,000 feet. Maximum payload size is equivalent to a 3p PocketQube nanosatellite. The rocket is fully reusable with a reflight cost of $80. The thruster uses Nitrous Oxide and Ethanol and achieves steady state operation with 10% film cooling modeled by a custom 1D thermal solver. A novel injector design combines split triplet and like doublet design principles to induce secondary and tertiary impingement. The chamber and nozzle leverage additive manufacturing of 316L stainless steel to reduce mass by 12%. A test launch is planned for the summer of 2025.