Portland State Aerospace Society becomes an official Friend of CSTART

Yesterday, Nathan Bergey of the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS), an educational aerospace project at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, accepted an offer to become a Friend of CSTART.  PSAS “consists of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff of PSU, and local community members- ranging from high school students to engineers in industry- who are interested in aerospace engineering”.  The team are currently focused on the construction of sophisticated sounding rockets, as a logical precursor to the ambitious goal of microsatellite launch capabilities.  PSAS is also strongly dedicated to an open source approach, with CAD drawings, schematic diagrams and custom written software being made available to anybody who wants it.

This is a very important Friendship from the perspective of the OHKLA project, since the PSAS group have a tremendous amount of knowledge, experience and facilities relevant to high altitude rocket launches, and some degree of previous experience with paraffin-fueled hybrid rockets (paraffin being a current favorite contender for OHKLA).  Close cooperation between CSTART and PSAS on the OHKLA project has the potential to offer an extremely accelerated pace of development for the project, to the benefit of both teams.  Everyone at CSTART is very excited about this possibility and looks forward to a long and mutually rewarding Friendship with PSAS.

PSAS is the third official Friend of CSTART, joining Copenhagen Suborbitals and the Open Luna Foundation.