Hoo-Rizon 1: Subscale Sounding Rocket; Rocket/Missile Technology Politics in the Israel-Palestine Conflict

The purpose of this capstone project was to design, build, and fly a single-stage, subscale sounding rocket. Our goal was to reach a maximum altitude of 3,000 feet, recover the launch vehicle, and acquire atmospheric data. The team consists of 15 members split across the following three subteams: Aerobody, Avionics, and Propulsion, with each subteam having a team lead and a technical lead. The project ran for two semesters from Fall 2024 through Spring 2025, and the team was partially formed over the summer of 2024. We conducted our research and design during the fall semester and built the physical rocket during the spring. Throughout the year, various design reviews were conducted to demonstrate the progress to our advisors. Our requirements were based on the Tripoli Rocketry Association restrictions as well as our team’s aspirations. Some notable design reviews in Fall 2024 were a project pitch, a conceptual design review, and a preliminary design review. The design reviews in the spring semester include a critical design review, and a post flight assessment review. Furthermore, students completed peer and self-evaluation surveys to give feedback on team dynamics.
The team launched the rocket on April 5th after the full completion of the rocket. While the rocket did manage to successfully launch, unfortunately, the parachute failed to deploy, leading to a hard landing and the upper half of our rocket, including the hardware and data of our onboard avionics. Despite the recovery failure, team members were still able to develop critical skills in problem solving, structural analysis, and control systems, setting the groundwork for consecutive capstones and future job opportunities.
The purpose of this STS Research Project is to analyze the ways in which the Iron Dome missile defense system shapes and maintains, and vice versa, political influences and structures within and outside of Israel. The Iron Dome plays a critical role in protecting Israeli citizens against aerial threats launched by militant groups within and outside the State of Israel. This is the commonly understood narrative regarding what the Iron Dome does; however, much like other weapon systems, the Iron Dome’s purpose goes beyond merely defending Israeli citizens from bombing attacks. These greater strategic political implications regarding the Iron Dome form the crux of my analysis.
My analysis is done through the lens of Langdon Winner’s Technological Politics framework, which asserts technological artifacts have political implications in two ways: they are a tool used for serving political objectives or create/shape political structures and relationships through the artifact’s existence. I first identify key stakeholders which impact, and are impacted by, the socio-political consequences set about via the Iron Dome’s deployment. Afterwards, I provide commentary on the greater political relationships/structures which shape, and are shaped by, the Iron Dome, citing/connecting the previously mentioned stakeholders and sources cited within my literature review as evidence. The Iron Dome is revealed to have influence not only over domestic Israeli politics, but also the politics in Israel’s neighbors and the US. These geopolitical relationships are built in such a way where it forces the existence of the Iron Dome as well as its continued existence for the foreseeable future.
The direct connection between my technical and STS projects is that they both have to deal with rockets; however, there is a bit of a more sophisticated connection. Rockets have historically been associated with one of two things: as weapons and as instruments for scientific discoveries in aerospace. While these two purposes for rockets are very different, the knowledge gained from rockets used/tested as weapons and as tools for science are often shared between each other. My technical project leans more so on building a rocket for scientific research as one of our goals was to measure atmospheric data during flight; however, it is a possibility that components of our research and/or the results of our flight could be used to advance rocket based weapon systems, like the Iron Dome.
During research into my technical capstone, however, the possibility of our project being potentially utilized for weapon systems seemed less likely. None of the research we conducted is any new information that is not already known by various government defense contractors, and the various subsystem components which make up our rocket are not very complex, with the exception of the electronics on board our avionics bay. Rather, the more likely way our technical capstone impacts the development of rocket based weapon systems is one or more of the members of our team utilizing the knowledge and experience gained from the rocket building process into the defense sector. While my rocketry capstone in particular is unlikely to have any real direct effect in weapons development, those who wish to work on similar projects in the future should still consider the ethics of the possibility of their research being used for such purposes.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering

Technical Advisor: Haibo Dong, Chen Cui, Jiacheng Guo

STS Advisor: Joshua Earle

Technical Team Members: Ben Cohen, Ethan Fouch, George Hubbard, Nikita Joy, Jacob Lewis, Tyler MacFarlane, Jean-Pierre Manapsal, Connor Owens, Omid Sayyadli, Kushi Sethuram, Swedha Skandakumar, Laurel Supplee, Christian Vergason, Luke Pritchard