Latest / Out of Bounds with Bo Bounds / How Mississippi State Built a CHAMPIONSHIP Rocket 🚀 | Maggie Delaughter

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How Mississippi State Built a CHAMPIONSHIP Rocket 🚀 | Maggie Delaughter · Out of Bounds with Bo Bounds

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Manager, and Maggie joins us on one oh five nine
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: to the Zone ESPN. Maggie, congratulations, good morning.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Good morning. How are you.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I'm doing well.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Uh?
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  Speaker 1: Were you confident going into this competition that the Space
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Cowboys could win it all?
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  Speaker 2: Yes? I do believe. We worked hard all year, we
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: tested our engineering limits and unfortunately at the first test
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: launch we had sailed. But we came back from that
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  Speaker 2: and built brand new rocket and tested it and we
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  Speaker 2: were definitely sure that it was going to be a winner.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Sounds like somebody that's going to work for Elon Musk
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: one day. We're visiting with Maggie de Lauter, Space Cowboys
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  Speaker 1: Project Manager, Bagley College of Engineering, twenty twenty six International
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  Speaker 1: Rocket Engineering Competition champs against one hundred and forty three
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  Speaker 1: teams Bagley dot MS State dot edu. Maggie Delauter joined us. Maggie,
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  Speaker 1: where are you from.
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  Speaker 2: I'm from Vicksburg, Mississippi.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. What what is your engineering major?
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  Speaker 2: I'm in Industrial and Systems engineering and I'm a senior
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  Speaker 2: this year.
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  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, has it been Has the curriculum been challenging?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, you know they try to strive, you know,
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  Speaker 2: to make it as much of a real world experience
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  Speaker 2: as possible, you know, and when we try to get internships,
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  Speaker 2: it looks almost exactly like the same thing you would
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  Speaker 2: see in class. It's awesome.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, that's cool. Congratulations to you all. Right with the competition.
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  Speaker 1: How long did y'all How many months did y'all prepare
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  Speaker 1: for the twenty twenty six International Rocket Engineering Competition?
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  Speaker 2: Maggie, Oh my gosh. So basically we start as soon
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  Speaker 2: as we end the previous year's competition. So when we
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  Speaker 2: won in twenty twenty six, in June, we ultimate are
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, we ultimately started preparing for this year's rocket.
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  Speaker 2: So pretty much on the drive home, we just started,
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  Speaker 2: you know, talking about it, designing things, and pretty much
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  Speaker 2: from June at the end up until about May is
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  Speaker 2: when we we work on that rocket, get it completely
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  Speaker 2: solid and ready to go.
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  Speaker 1: And you mentioned that there was some you know testing
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  Speaker 1: here and some hiccups and some challenges. Was it something
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  Speaker 1: Maggie where the team was like, hey, we didn't really fail.
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  Speaker 1: We're just going to learn and see what we did
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  Speaker 1: right and wrong and keep going. Was that the approach?
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely? You know, engineering is more of one of those
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  Speaker 2: things of it's not really a failure, but it's something
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  Speaker 2: that you can learn from. Yeah, So that's really the
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  Speaker 2: approach that the team took was, Hey, you know, the
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  Speaker 2: thing that we tried and didn't work, so let's go
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  Speaker 2: back to the thing that we know works, or let's
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  Speaker 2: try something else. But ultimately, it, you know, worked out
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  Speaker 2: and it was a really great learning opportunity.
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  Speaker 1: How many rounds or stages did you go throughout that? What?
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  Speaker 1: Once you got to Texas and you started going through
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: the competition, how many rounds or stages was it?
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  Speaker 2: Maggie, So, do you mean like when we're launching? Yeah, yes, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: So the competition occurs over multiple days, at least for
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  Speaker 2: the actual launches. So we got out there on the
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  Speaker 2: first day and we got there I think at five am,
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: six am something like that, and we were ready to
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  Speaker 2: go by about eight or nine. But unfortunately, by the
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  Speaker 2: time we got in line to go launch, there was
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  Speaker 2: like a six hour wind delay because the winds were
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  Speaker 2: so high, so we didn't launch until like one or
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  Speaker 2: two o'clock. But we were still on the first day,
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  Speaker 2: and we were really fortunate because the next couple of
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  Speaker 2: days were completely rained out and definitely flooded out of
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  Speaker 2: the desert. It's crazy.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, when I guess when you saw things play out,
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  Speaker 1: how do they announce the winner? Like walk me through
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  Speaker 1: when y'all knew? Is there a lead judge? How does
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  Speaker 1: it work?
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  Speaker 2: So there's multiple different criteria at least for judging the competition.
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  Speaker 2: The largest factor of that is a technical report that
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  Speaker 2: we have to write that we are basically working on
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  Speaker 2: from the beginning of the spring school year until May,
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  Speaker 2: and that pretty much details every part of our design,
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  Speaker 2: what our thought process was, why we designed it the
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  Speaker 2: way we did, you know, different things like that. Also,
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  Speaker 2: the launch factors in so you have to hit as
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  Speaker 2: close to thirty k as possible, thirty thousand feet that
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  Speaker 2: is the category that we compete it in. And then
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  Speaker 2: you also have to run simulations. So we basically put
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  Speaker 2: this thing into a software that tells us how high
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  Speaker 2: the rocket's going to go based off of you know,
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  Speaker 2: the weight, how tall it is, how like how pointy
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  Speaker 2: it is, the different fin shapes that we make, the
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  Speaker 2: motor we put in it, all these different factors. We
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  Speaker 2: put that into a simulation and it will tell us
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  Speaker 2: based off off of our programming, how high the rocket
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  Speaker 2: will go, so we have to tell them that and
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  Speaker 2: how close the rocket hits to that estimated apagey versus
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  Speaker 2: the competition's set apage is kind of like a criteria
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  Speaker 2: in that, but there's there's multiple different multiple different criteria,
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  Speaker 2: and it's judged off of two technical judges and then
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  Speaker 2: also all of the all of the judges come together
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  Speaker 2: to kind of evaluate all of the teams, and it's
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  Speaker 2: based off of a points system.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, that's incredible. I bet the celebration was was pretty
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  Speaker 1: amazing too. When you when you heard your name right.
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  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Yes. So unfortunately we couldn't be there
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  Speaker 2: in person because they had to continue launching into Sunday,
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  Speaker 2: so they had a live streamed award ceremony, so we
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: had to watch it live at home, and we got
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  Speaker 2: a few Space Cowboys together and we were in our
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  Speaker 2: design room watching it, and first we found out that
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  Speaker 2: we won the category and we were really excitic about
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  Speaker 2: that because this is the first time I think that
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  Speaker 2: we've won two competitions back to back first place. And
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  Speaker 2: then at the end of it, they announced the overall
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  Speaker 2: winner and we saw up on the screen Team two
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  Speaker 2: sixteen Space Cowboys and we were like, no way, no way,
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  Speaker 2: that's not real. So it was really exciting to see that.
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  Speaker 1: That is awesome. Congratulations Maggie de Lauter, Space Cowboys Project Manager,
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  Speaker 1: Bagley College of Engineering on the campus Mississippi State University,
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six International Rocket Engineering Competition Champs against one
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  Speaker 1: hundred and forty teams internationally and domestic. Maggie, congratulations on
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  Speaker 1: your success and we wish you the best and thank
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  Speaker 1: you for your time today.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Maggie de laughter soon to be Bagley College of Engineering
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  Speaker 1: alum from Mississippi State University and part of the Space
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  Speaker 1: Cowboys team that won another national championship.