Welcome

In September 2014, the five of us walked into Orbital's testing facility in Phoenix, Ariz., took one look at the horizontal test stand defining this project, and collectively thought, "Wait, you want us to do what with that? How the...what the...okay, sure." You see, the horizontal test stand is massive, and at the time it was unlike anything we had ever been asked to design for during our time at Northern Arizona University. However, over the course of a few weeks after that initial trip, we began breaking the problem down into smaller and smaller parts until it was something we could all wrap our heads around. The best way to explain it here is probably the same way we began explaining it to our friends.

"Basically, Orbital has this big test stand where they do the structural tests for these even bigger launch vehicle fairings. Right now the engineers are having to manually roll the fairings on the test stand in order to setup for the structural tests. Not only does it seem super tedious, but we're pretty sure if you lost control of those fairings that that they would come swooping down and hit you with about the same force of getting hit by a bus on a freeway. So yeah, it's not really ideal. They want us to design a mechanism, either electric or penumatic, that allows the fairings to continuously rotate while on the test stand."

Easy enough, right?

So once again, welcome and thank you for visiting our site. We truly hope you enjoy it, and learn as much sifting through it as we did while working on the project throughout our senior years at Northern Arizona University. The headings on the left side of this page will direct you to reports, presentations, and the team members associated with this project. The reports and presentations sections will take you on an engineering design journey from the initial definition of a problem all the way to the final design with a few, very important pitstops inbetween. Thanks for your time and interest in the Orbital Test Stand project!