Bluestone

From mid 2022 to the end of 2023 I was working on a flight computer called Bluestone under the umbrella of UC Aerospace. In 2022 I lead the initial development of the project during the planning and requirements phase before handing it off in Q2 of 2023to another team member when I was promoted from project lead to team lead. However, I continued to work on the design aspects, just not the project management. Fundamentally, Bluestone was designed as modular as possible for a number of reasons. The first being the orientations of the components, this flight computer was designed for a boosted dart two stage Spaceshot launch vehicle. Thus, the g-forces to be experienced by the electronics could be greater than 50 g for upwards of 10 seconds. At the time I did not really have anyway to put this in context but back of the napkin calculations show that assuming an SO-8 package has a mass of 0.000180 kg then at 50 g it would have a weight force of 0.08829 N. The next reason was that it would mean that if a single part of the system failed or had flaws in the design then the single board could be swapped out, instead of remanufacturing the whole system. The last big reason was that it would allow more people to work on the system as a whole, as bluestone was a teaching tool for everyone involved it allowed for one or two people to work on a board. As I had defined standards for the shape and connecter pinouts all each person working on a board had to do was take the inputs of the board to create the desired output signals and data streams. While the rocket on which bluestone would fly evolved overtime and slowly got cancelled bluestone remained a key teaching tool for all involved and laid the foundations for the UC Aerospace Avionics and Tracking Team which has now grown to greater the 30 members.