After All This Time (2/22/21-2/28/21)

Now that I’m back in the saddle, getting used to the weekly activities in the Independent Study and Mentorship program, turning in assessments and blogs each week, I feel like I have finally got ahold of the pace at which I am proceeding on developing my final product. SInce this past week has been asynchronous - meaning that I haven’t had to sit in zoom meetings and largely decide how I spend my time for the entirety of the day - I have made significant progress in regards to expanding my understanding of spacecraft. To be more specific, since I am designing the external structure of a manned spacecraft, my research has bore a great amount of fruit in regards to perceiving how spacecraft enter the atmosphere (of both Earth, the Moon, and Mars). While I already had an understanding of some of the considerations that aerospace engineers must account for when designing entry and reentry vehicles thanks to my experiences with launching model rockets in my aerospace engineering class at the Career and Technical Education Center as well as for The American Rocketry Competition, I had little to no understanding of how aerospace engineers selected and designed the capsules in which astronauts would be located in when the spacecraft took flight. Thanks to an article that I recently read, I have been able to get some inspiration from past spacecraft designs in regards to design, shape, capacity to create a CAD model that is as faithful to real spacecraft as possible. At least now I have overcome one of the uncertain parts of my journey in developing my final product. The next stage in the design process will be creating the sample frames of my potential spacecraft, where I will be able to draw on the 3D modelling skills that I have been refining for the past three years.