Outta The Frying Pan, Into The Autoclave
by Cameron Hilman ‘23
I came to MIT knowing that I wanted to build rockets. I had set that as my long-term goal in high school, so that much was decided. More difficult, though, was deciding which student group to join. Building rockets was my long-term goal, sure, but why not try out building cars? Hyperloop? Planes? After some good reviews from graduating seniors, I was set on joining Design Build Fly so I could get a more high level introduction to aircraft design. The projects on Rocket Team seemed too complicated and I was sure that I would be delegated to some sub-sub-subsystem with no hope of seeing the bigger picture.
Unfortunately for me, everything at MIT tends to happen at once. Orientation week, REX, Rush, and classes all started at once, forcing me to choose between personal interests, professional interests, social interaction, and just time to decompress. Design Build Fly, specifically, had its on-boarding lessons scheduled for the same time as the Rush events which I needed to decide the right living group for me. At the end of the day, I didn’t join Design Build Fly and revisited Rocket Team one more time.
As the semester got going, the risk of missing out didn’t back down. I was constantly running around, trying to make it to every event and hang out with every group at all moments of the day. I even bought an electric skateboard and learned to ride so that I could optimize my commute times between the dorms, the AeroAstro building, and my fraternity house across the river. I managed to keep it up, but at a cost: I hardly spent time on Rocket Team.
When it came to deciding on a subteam, I didn’t really know about any of them and I had a lot of unanswered questions. How many subteams are there? What structures do Structures build? Isn’t Propulsion mostly chemistry? What’s a composite? Eventually, I made my way to the undergraduate lounge and asked the closest person I recognized where I could learn about subteams. That person said “right this way!” and pushed me into a room where I learned we were going to build and test carbon fiber fins and coupons. Afterwards, she came right up to me and asked me what I wanted to work on. I had no idea what the projects entailed and didn’t really have a preference, so I just said, “anything’s good” and tried to help out when help was needed.
This kinda worked out for the first semester. I still got to run around and dabble in the things I was interested in, doing a million things at once, but not taking on too much responsibility. I only showed up occasionally and did a little bit with the Composites subteam here and there, mostly going in by myself to organize or prepare materials for other people to work on. I spent my first IAP doing Global Teaching Labs through MISTI so I actually missed out on launch, only seeing the occasional group message in the team Chanty. I didn’t know how the launch went and didn’t hear the bad news until I passed the Composites subteam leader in the MacGregor hallway.
She sighed and told me that the executive board decided to buy a commercial fin can instead of using one of the ones we built over the semester. There were too many defects in our in-house products to trust, but we didn’t have a chance to test any of the store-bought ones. The result was fin can failure, and our rocket came crashing down from several thousand feet. On one hand, they didn’t give us a chance. On the other hand, we needed to do better.
A lot of the Composites subteam lost motivation after that, our numbers started to dwindle, and at the post-IAP recap we only counted six members in total. We made a plan to get back on track with a solid manufacturing strategy. Covid hit. Down to four members. The subteam leader reached out to see if I was interested in applying to be the new subteam leader. I applied. Graduation passes. Three members.
What started off as a scheduling conflict was now my primary responsibility at MIT. The three of us, all first-years with about four months of on-campus experience, suddenly had to know what we were talking about. Still a little dazed and confused, we made it through preliminary design reviews with other rocket teams and learned a lot. They sounded like they knew a lot more than us. We followed up with a critical design review with some MIT faculty. My heart started racing when I saw a name join the Zoom call. “Jeffery A. Hoffman.” Holy shit. An astronaut is going to hear me talk about my designs. I don’t know what I’m talking about. This is going to be a disaster.
It went surprisingly well! The presentation was a great bonding experience and I really got to know the members of the team outside Composites. The team started to feel less like an obligation and more like a group of friends. Last fall, we went through recruitment and on-boarding together. During IAP this year, I got to live with a whole bunch of team members in an AirBnB dubbed the Launch Lodge, building personal rockets, playing frisbee, and vibing out.
MIT has too many amazing opportunities to make a bad choice. Even the accidental, lazy, last-resort kind of decisions are hard to call mistakes. Spreading yourself thin can be fun in the short-term, but I’ve now found much more meaning from embracing more responsibility for my projects and my relationships in Rocket Team. Even if I only kinda know what I’m doing and I still haven’t been able to finish an actual fin can, my team will be behind me when the time comes and I can’t wait to build it together.
