The Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Cosford branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society held their monthly lecture meeting at RAF Museum Cosford tonight, with a talk by one of Staffordshire University’s own, Group Captain Peter Mountain, one of the Senior Lecturers in the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Sciences. His topic? ‘The Design of Small Rocket Motors‘.
Small Rockets – as shown by this sub orbital solid fuel rocket.
Peter presented to a crowd of around 60 people, mostly branch members and visitors for an hour, introducing them to the world of rocket science. He started by setting out his own background and how his career in the RAF had led to the teaching of rocket design – through the path of calculation and reverse engineering during the Cold War to find out the scope of the threat Russian and Chinese rockets posed.
He then regaled the audience with tales of lunchtime, napkin based calculation sessions to see if the Air Show sales pitch was based in reality. Having warmed his audience up, it was time to break out some background theory and calculations to explain the principles of solid rockets and the calculations required to successfully design the system as well as some of the issues that might be encountered along the way.
It was then a chance for the audience to bring their questions to Peter, which they did – he handled them well and elaborated; pulling other Staffordshire University attendees, Automotive Senior Lecturer Debi Roberts and MSc student and Branch Student Rep Robert Kameny into the discussion too. The lecture was well received by the branch, who thanked Peter for such an interesting talk.