An industry-partnered Canadian student rocket competition series has big plans for 2021.
Even amid a difficult pandemic that postponed the first iteration of the competition, 20 Canadian universities and over 1,000 students plan to take part in Launch Canada, which teaches post-secondary students rocketry, space management and other skills to prepare for the fast-growing rocket industry in Canada.
As with numerous rocketry endeavours in Canada, the impact of the pandemic is hard to chart for the coming year. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced this week that a vaccine will start rolling out to the general population in April 2021, with hopes to have the entire country vaccinated by December that year. The organizers of Launch Canada have thus pledged to be as flexible as possible to accommodate students in the coming months.
“One of the biggest wild cards at this point is student access to workspaces,” Launch Canada president Adam Trumpour said in an interview. “If they aren’t able to finish building their projects, then obviously the competition will have to be postponed. It’s a dynamic situation, but we’re committed to continuing to support the students in every way we can.”
The 2021 competition, whenever it runs, will include two main categories of competition. The “Basic Launch” category will allow newer, less experienced teams to launch a rocket to an altitude of 10,000 feet (3 kilometres), potentially including commercial off-the-shelf rocket parts and a payload if they want.
More advanced teams can participate in the “Advanced Launch” category, which insists on rockets powered by student-built engines that fly to altitudes greater than 15,000 feet (4.6 kilometres).
“This challenge encourages the teams to take a rigorous systems engineering approach to their projects,” Trumpour said. “Rather than prescribing a target altitude, we allow the students to define their own requirements, and like in the real world, we will then judge them based on how effectively they manage to develop a vehicle that meets the requirements it was designed to.”
Another aspect of the competition is a technology development challenge that allows teams to enter with a specific technology they want to focus on, instead of an entire vehicle. This could include technology such as a hybrid or liquid rocket engine or an active stabilization system, Trumpour said.
The competition is planned to be in-person over several days. The first day will be a “conference” portion where teams present projects to judges and sponsors. The rest of the competition will happen at the launch site. A “mission control” and “setup” areas will allow teams to prepare and launch their rockets safely away from the site. After each launch, teams will track and recover their rockets and return them to the setup area for a final inspection. Judges will then tally the scores.
The competition’s mandate is to “close that gap between theory and practice” to allow students to practice real-world rocketry amid the theoretical training they receive at school, Trumpour said. “Once they [students] enter the workforce, they will not only be productive contributors sooner, and they will be less likely to make the sort of ‘rookie mistakes’ that often come from inexperience in this field and can be incredibly costly.
“We need to give people the chance to try new things, fail and learn when the cost of failure is low, and that cost will never be lower than with a student or amateur project,” he added. “Doing this within a framework that provides the required level of safety can give us a huge competitive edge as innovators in a capital-intensive field like rocketry.”
The skills students develop are numerous, but encompass fields such as engineering (mechanical, electrical, structural and software), manufacturing (helping students prepare for a quick-growing field in Canada, particularly in fields such as additive manufacturing) and learning how to optimize for cost to help students think like a startup.
“Ironically, one of the most beautiful moments at a rocket competition tends to happen after a rocket fails in flight,” Trumpour said. “The students start analyzing the data, studying the wreckage, going back through their design and analytical work, and piecing together what went wrong. The experience of doing that teaches valuable real-world lessons that they will never forget, builds an amazing depth of understanding of not just their systems, but their design and manufacturing processes as well, and does this at low cost.”
Sponsors are also stepping up to the plate, according to Trumpour. Several private donors anonymously make private contributions, while a new partner – to be announced shortly – will be sponsoring a payload challenge as part of the competition.
Major sponsors include Macfab Manufacturing (financial sponsorship, in-kind sponsorship) and Kulite (which donated several pressure transducer products and gave talks to students); some other companies are involved in terms of giving employee time for competition development or talks, he added.
“Collaboration is one of Launch Canada’s pillars, so we are always eager to work creatively with sponsors and partners to make sure they get maximum value from their involvement,” Trumpour said.
Trumpour said the competition is an essential to combat Canada’s traditional “top-down” approach to space, which usually identifies priority technology areas such as medicine or robotics and allows other industries – such as rocketry and launch services – to be outsourced.
“After years of feeling like a ‘cry in the wilderness’ as a Canadian rocket engineer and advocate, there have been some big changes globally in recent years,” Trumpour said. “Companies like SpaceX are bringing a level of attention and excitement to rocketry that has probably not been seen at any point in my lifetime. Meanwhile, companies like Rocket Lab have shown that even a small company founded by amateurs in a tiny country like New Zealand can succeed in developing game-changing launch capabilities.”
Canadians have been heavy participants in the U.S.-based Spaceport America Cup for students in recent years, starting with a few teams in Ontario and Quebec and then expanding with students participating from across our country Trumpour said.
“Case in point: two years ago, the Canadians made up about 10 percent of the teams there, yet they won 75 percent of the top awards at the entire competition including first place overall, and first place in every category they participated in,” noted Trumpour, who is on the advisory board on that competition and also participates in the event.
Launch Canada really got going from a 2018 conference session Trumpour presented at the Canadian SmallSat Symposium in Toronto hosted by the now-defunct Canadian Space Commerce Association, where Trumpour also hosted a conference track dedicated to rockets and space launch. During that conference, it became apparent that interest was quite high in creating a student rocketry competition in Canada, Trumpour said. During one question-and-answer session, an audience member proposed to personally donate $10,000 to create a Canadian rocket competition, and two other audience members offered to match the contribution.
With that seed money, Trumpour founded Launch Canada as a not-for-profit competition, with the first iteration then planned for August 2020. That date was postponed indefinitely due to the pandemic, although students could still participate through a virtual lecture series that included luminaries such as Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno and former Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides.
“Those talks were wildly successful, with many students specifically noting how much the experience meant to them, “Trumpour said. “These have become another ongoing feature [of the competition]. While this past summer didn’t look quite like anyone had expected, it just reinforced the idea that we’re here to do everything we can to support the community.”
The full list of participating universities in Launch Canada is:
- University of Victoria
- University of British Columbia
- Simon Fraser University
- University of Alberta
- University of Calgary
- University of Manitoba
- Western University
- University of Waterloo
- Ryerson University
- University of Toronto
- York University
- Queen’s University
- Carleton University
- University of Ottawa
- Concordia University
- Polytechnique Montreal
- École de technologie supérieure
- McGill University
- Université de Sherbrooke
- Université Laval