October SkyI am Mannix Cepeda, I was the Project Manager for Rocket Group 351 “Black Mesa”. During the course of the project, I oversaw and supervised the progress and well being of the group. I came up with the background research writeups and orchestrated the exhibition presentation. I also assisted with the construction of the actual rocket, and I decided which financial transactions to approve or decline.
From failure, I learned success. Each negative result created a positive. I learned from my mistakes, and I moved forward. With help, I built three different rockets. Two of them successfully launched, but that doesn't mean there weren’t failures or flaws in them. For each error, I had to find a solution. This was the process that made the rockets better and better. The finance and budget aspects were very interesting. They had a heavy influence on the decisions we made during rocket design and construction. We always had to keep in mind that the resources we used did not just “grow on trees”. |
On the night of the exhibition, the voting process was a bit ineffective. We had a lot more visitors than there were open voting slots. The number of parent voters and student voters exceeded the maximum number of voters. As a result, the servers crashed. Once they were back up, not everyone’s votes were counted as well, leaving lots of groups with zeroes.
Next time, I want to have more time to test the rocket and prepare it for the launch day. We did a lot of tests on our rocket before the launch, but I feel like it wasn't enough. We weren’t exactly sure on how much feel we needed, how much weight, how much tape, etc. We could improve by having some practice launches, or I could put more effort into seeing what our rocket needs and does not need. |