THE EXPERIENCE
In 2022, I joined a freshman-only engineering program (CATiSE) in the club CubeCats that helped us get hands-on in the field with little to no prior experience. I eventually became the team lead for the Flight System of the yearly high-altitude balloon project, Floppa. We worked on deliverables and budget for the first semester and focused on building and launching the balloon in the second one, progressively spending more weekly hours to put everything together and make sure our methods were effective, safe, sustainable, cost-friendly, and optimized. Diving into project management, system building, and critical problem-solving was such a meaningful challenge that I decided to turn that into a self-designed honors experience and boost my learning.
WHAT I LEARNED
Floppa was based on 3 main goals: to collect a sample of a cloud, to measure air pollution levels, and to record 360-footage throughout the whole flight. As the Flight System was responsible for designing and distributing all the hardware developed by the Software System in the simplest way possible, we had to connect all 3 deliverables in a small payload box that was resistant to different weather conditions and a significant landing speed. Not only did we have to be systematic and focused to connect and be productive in a recently new group, but we also had very limited time considering everyone’s busy schedules. Being the lead helped me understand how to maturely deal with unpredictable factors that come up in such high-impact projects, like new safety protocols that conflicted with the camera mount design, our battery life determining the time our balloon would spend in the air and consequently its ascend and descend speeds, as well as the limited space inside of our payload box where only specific 3D printed parts would fit. Acknowledging that the result was imperfect, I realized that prioritizing some tasks over others and letting go of some factors will always happen in such projects as long as we stick to our goals and the organization’s purpose – which is why we were still very successful.
HOW IT IMPACTED ME
To have this position in such an incredible, dynamic, challenging and ultimately really fun club was one of the most special opportunities that I had during my freshman year. I had the chance to deeply comprehend the pillars of complex projects that depend on limited resources and time, as well as several people. It made me develop crucial leadership and social skills while also doing hands-on work that intellectually prepared me for the industry – things I would only learn from experience: parachute mounting, 3D designing and printing, and initiating physical processes happening 35,000 feet up in the air. Growing so much academically and personally, I am eager to lead other innovative projects that make even the slightest impact on the research community and on other students who are learning engineering skills from zero – like I once was. These goals will be my priority in my upcoming sophomore year as I become the new CubeCats Vice-President and lead the CATiSE program, mentoring freshmen that will eventually represent the Flight and Software systems of their projects. Hopefully, their experience will be as positive as mine was.
We documented most part of our project in the club’s Instagram account (find the link here!), and this sample of our work is a great example of the journey to successfully complete Floppa.
In 2022, I joined a freshman-only engineering program (CATiSE) in the club CubeCats that helped us get hands-on in the field with little to no prior experience. I eventually became the team lead for the Flight System of the yearly high-altitude balloon project, Floppa. We worked on deliverables and budget for the first semester and focused on building and launching the balloon in the second one, progressively spending more weekly hours to put everything together and make sure our methods were effective, safe, sustainable, cost-friendly, and optimized. Diving into project management, system building, and critical problem-solving was such a meaningful challenge that I decided to turn that into a self-designed honors experience and boost my learning.
WHAT I LEARNED
Floppa was based on 3 main goals: to collect a sample of a cloud, to measure air pollution levels, and to record 360-footage throughout the whole flight. As the Flight System was responsible for designing and distributing all the hardware developed by the Software System in the simplest way possible, we had to connect all 3 deliverables in a small payload box that was resistant to different weather conditions and a significant landing speed. Not only did we have to be systematic and focused to connect and be productive in a recently new group, but we also had very limited time considering everyone’s busy schedules. Being the lead helped me understand how to maturely deal with unpredictable factors that come up in such high-impact projects, like new safety protocols that conflicted with the camera mount design, our battery life determining the time our balloon would spend in the air and consequently its ascend and descend speeds, as well as the limited space inside of our payload box where only specific 3D printed parts would fit. Acknowledging that the result was imperfect, I realized that prioritizing some tasks over others and letting go of some factors will always happen in such projects as long as we stick to our goals and the organization’s purpose – which is why we were still very successful.
HOW IT IMPACTED ME
To have this position in such an incredible, dynamic, challenging and ultimately really fun club was one of the most special opportunities that I had during my freshman year. I had the chance to deeply comprehend the pillars of complex projects that depend on limited resources and time, as well as several people. It made me develop crucial leadership and social skills while also doing hands-on work that intellectually prepared me for the industry – things I would only learn from experience: parachute mounting, 3D designing and printing, and initiating physical processes happening 35,000 feet up in the air. Growing so much academically and personally, I am eager to lead other innovative projects that make even the slightest impact on the research community and on other students who are learning engineering skills from zero – like I once was. These goals will be my priority in my upcoming sophomore year as I become the new CubeCats Vice-President and lead the CATiSE program, mentoring freshmen that will eventually represent the Flight and Software systems of their projects. Hopefully, their experience will be as positive as mine was.
We documented most part of our project in the club’s Instagram account (find the link here!), and this sample of our work is a great example of the journey to successfully complete Floppa.