Rocket mechanism

As part of the ME101 curriculum at Stanford, students are divided into teams to create a mechanism that can "transport a package from point A to point B, incorporating both horizontal and vertical motion."

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For this project, I was in a group with four other ME101 students. We decided that our "package" would be a rocket, which we would send horizontally to a launch pad and then vertically to the moon.

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My role on the team was to design and fabricate the visual components: the rocket, the moon, the stars, the astronaut, etc. I went through several iterations for each of these elements, since I had to constantly tinker with aspects like the weight and size to allow for the mechanism to properly function.

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After many trial runs, we learned the importance of "failing fast," and we were thrilled when the rocket successfully made it to the moon (see video on the left), triggering the astronaut to hold up his flag and a marble to knock down the stars on our vertical structure.

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