HEDGE-2: Hypersonic Reentry Deployable Glider Experiment 2; Using Duty Ethics to Examine the Cougar Flight 491 Helicopter Incident 18 views

My technical work and my STS research are connected through the theme of aerospace engineering safety and the fundamental duty to protect human life in extreme environments. While my technical project focuses on the practical design and successful deployment of a physical aerospace vehicle, my STS research examines the ethical failures of original design engineers when an aerospace vehicle catastrophically fails. Together, these projects explore the tension between relying on mathematical probability versus ensuring robust physical safety. My technical work demonstrates how to build reliable, fail-operational hardware for a hypersonic glider, while my research explores the tragic consequences of relying on statistical loopholes rather than physical redesigns in the offshore helicopter industry. My technical capstone project details the design, fabrication, and testing of HEDGE-2, a low-cost, hypersonic reentry deployable glider experiment. The objective of this mission was to demonstrate the feasibility of affordable CubeSat technology for hypersonic flight research through a suborbital launch from NASA Wallops sounding rocket. Rather than focusing on a single component, the project provided invaluable hands-on experience in a comprehensive design, build, and fly process. Our team successfully integrated mechanical flight hardware, complex electronics, and custom software. To ensure the glider could survive ascent loads up to 50 G and reentry temperatures approaching 500 degrees Fahrenheit, our team built fail- operational architecture into the deployment and telemetry systems to guarantee successful data transmission. My STS research explores the Cougar Helicopters Flight 491 crash, where a Sikorsky S92A suffered a total loss of main gearbox oil and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, tragically killing seventeen people. Using the conceptual framework of Kantian duty ethics, specifically the universality and reciprocity principles, I argue that the original design engineers violated their moral obligations to the passengers. Instead of redesigning a physically flawed gearbox, the manufacturer used probability calculations to legally bypass physical safety requirements. Furthermore, they failed to respect passenger autonomy by designing inaccessible survival beacons. My argument demonstrates that relying on a mathematical loophole is never an acceptable substitute for physical engineering safety. Working on these two projects simultaneously provided a profound perspective on my professional responsibilities. My STS research demonstrated the catastrophic human cost of prioritizing economic convenience over absolute physical safety. This directly influences my technical work on HEDGE-2. Even though our glider is an uncrewed testbed, I realized our team must apply the same uncompromising standard of reliability. When integrating the flight hardware and software, we could not rely on theoretical assumptions; we implemented robust physical redundancies to guarantee the system would not fail in a real-world environment. Practicing this rigorous standard on an uncrewed project prepares me for my ethical duty as a future aerospace engineer to prioritize the physical reality of human survival over any other constraint.

BS (Bachelor of Science)

RockSat; Hypersonic Flight; Care Ethics; Sikorsky; Aerospace Engineering

School of Engineering and Applied Science Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science Technical Advisor: Chris Goyne STS Advisor: Benjamin Laugelli Technical Team Members: Elizabeth Armstrong, Olivia Sauber, Hannah Soberman, Gaby Flores, Zachary Davis, Rishika Deshmukh, Saba Niknam, Nand Patel, Humza Rubel, Christian Wright, Tristan Scott, Logan Tolbert

English

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2026-05-08