Portland State Aerospace Society

The Portland State Aerospace Society, otherwise known as PSAS, is a small rocketry and aeronautical organization run by Portland State University. While I am certainly not an engineer (like most of the team members are), I got invovled with PSAS around January of 2014.

The club is free and open to the public, in fact not all of the group members are even students or faculty of PSU. As I mentioned above, most of the team consists of mechanical or electrical engineering students, with some smaller individual teams working on capstone projects.

In July of 2014, I sponsored and helped support their "Launch 11" event out in Brothers, OR. They launched their tried-and-true LV2 rocket to about 15,000' on an N motor. Despite numerous avionics issues on launch day, we finally pushed the button and had a successful flight!

That next summer, July 2015, they held "Launch 12" which was a near-duplicate of Launch 11 - same rocket, same motor, and many of the same avionics. The big difference this time around was that the entire weekend was MUCH more streamlined - better transportation/gear hauling, more preparation, and lastly, very few avionics issues! Unlike last year, there were absolutely no big software problems causing monster delays. We loaded the rocket on the tower at 9:00 AM and hit the button at 10:30 AM - how about that? :) They even let me do the honors (actually clicking an "IGNITE" button on a computer screen), which was very cool.

PSAS did not fly anything in 2016.

Check out the PSAS website for more info on the team. Their next launch, "Launch 13", is currently in the works and is scheduled for sometime in 2017, involving a new carbon fiber airframe. We'll see what happens...