Show HN: My high school team's space probe
16 comments
·March 16, 2025sailorganymede
From the UK too. Seeing those docs gave me a total whiplash! I remember the amount of paperwork we had to do for these kind of projects. Funny how nothing has changed.
JohnOfOsgiliath
Yeah. I can't tell you how much time we spent typing in the library. We spent so much time on risk assesment, that we nearly forgot to write about electronics.
assimpleaspossi
When I was in grade school, our teacher taught us that one way to test for a properly constructed sentence containing two persons or groups was to remove one and see how it sounds or looks. Such as, "Me made this design document..."
exe34
"Me buy milk" - https://youtu.be/N4vf8N6GpdM?si=ENOIbip3xDuRI9yJ
the_arun
It is great to see High School projects on HN. Congratulations & wish your team all the best!!
JohnOfOsgiliath
I really appreciate that. I just really enjoy being a part of this community, and I'm glad we can represent the younger generation.
Scarjit
Congratulations on your launch! Super interesting to see all of the technical documentation behind it.
JohnOfOsgiliath
Thanks so much for the kind words. I really enjoyed writing the documentation.
null
jadayesnaamsi
Great project!!
Interesting that the largest section of the report is the last one called "Social Media outreach" to justify their choices.
JohnOfOsgiliath
Thanks so much. I think we just really wanted to explain our plan on social media (and our outreach person didn't have much to do).
xattt
How were you able to tap into the expertise to get to this point? Rocketry isn't something you can just "pick up"! I'm very impressed.
JohnOfOsgiliath
I can't speak for my whole team, but as the programmer/electrical guy/writer I have spent a few years teaching myself skills using the internet. I used YouTube tutorials to learn to code, and use blender, and that sort of thing.
Also, to be fair, we didn't quite build the rocket, we just built the probe.
mattmaroon
How much would it cost right now to buy 10% of your future earnings? (Half-kidding.) Kids these days are kind awesome and don't listen to anyone who says otherwise.
JohnOfOsgiliath
I'm really grateful for the kindness. That sort of attitude is great to hear, and I'll keep you in the loop about money ;)
joyM416
[dead]
Me and a few friends made this design document as part of our entry to the UK CanSat competition where a high school team is required to build a probe to be launched. The probe must serve some purpose, and ours was to map the temperature and pressure of the air at different altitudes.
We had the opportunity to launch it a week ago and you can find the video of our launch here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16bsLzxjP7OWRqVvCB62cLv7QYLR...
During the launch we reached 400m above sea level, and the can pulled 70gs successfully. The parachute and can stayed intact. Unfortunately, on the day, we were unable to successfully implement GPS.
The raw results are here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oK1vukjcNcsaXMAPeFlzZ66aHlR... And a slightly cleaned up version is here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xYhkp3sWoJF0bCkkvFs1AygSdLU...
I used my data presentation software to present our results here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-r7lT0J4MDLiYfuaasDXJsr5rCA... The software (in the form of a python script to be executed in blender) can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LHP7OwgI_O8t6-NBI0ZPn9JUt2G... It's not pretty, but it works.
The differences in temperature and pressure results were exaggerated in the so that the gradient could be clearly seen.
Unfortunately, we did not get into the final (judged on this document) but it was an awesome experience nevertheless. The judges used this form to mark us: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eZnum5zuJvkLzY7RLtm9A-NNzxw... We would love to get any feedback from more experienced people, as we intend to do similar projects in the future and at least two of us want to be professional engineers. I'm happy to reply to any comments.