Tasks
● Help run FAR-OUT, the first American student rocketry competition dedicated to experimental liquid and hybrid propulsion
● Work alongside the three Operations and Technical Leads as a bridge between their areas
● Write competition rules that push teams to solve their hard problems without over-constraining how they solve them
● Mentor teams prior to competition to help them catch problems with their rockets
● Run preflight inspection, giving approval that every rocket is properly assembled and ready for launch
● Coordinate post-flight recovery to ensure safe operations
● Assist with general logistics, including scoring
Actions
● Worked with the team to identify what the previous year's failures demanded of the rules
● Drafted and phrased the new rules for the official rulebook
● Communicated rules to teams, fielded questions, resolved edge cases, and incorporated their feedback
● Read through and gave feedback on multiple rounds of progress updates and technical reports
● Developed procedures, requirements, and inspection criteria based on firsthand experience as a student rocketeer at Columbia
● Ran pre-flight checks on every rocket, including inspecting integration, avionics, and recovery systems
● Gave pre-recovery briefings, tracked teams during recovery, and inspected rockets post-flight
● Fought a brushfire caused by a crash-landing rocket
Results
● FAR-OUT has completed its third year, with hundreds of students, 50+ teams across 5 countries, and 19 successful launches
● Rules rewrite reduced the recurrence of the previous year's most common failures, even with many teams competing for the first time
● Caught multiple critical issues in design reviews and preflight inspection that would have caused failure to launch, failure to recover, or an explosion
● Planned and coordinated recovery operations across 19 launches with zero injuries or safety incidents
● Rose from volunteer to a leadership role over two years of contributions
