The engineering club was fortunate to have a teleconference with Jacqueline Sotraidis, a Propulsion Engineer @ Virgin Orbit and Patrick Harvey, a Systems Engineer @ Virgin Orbit. The two engineers provided lots of information about opportunities in engineering, what Virgin does, why it is important and answered questions.
Virgin Orbit is a company within the Virgin Group which plans to provide launch services for small satellites. The company was formed in 2017 to develop the air-launched LauncherOne rocket, launched from Cosmic Girl, which had previously been a project of Virgin Galactic. Virgin Orbit is one of the companies owned by billionaire Richard Branson. They have been in the news a lot in the recent weeks as their Boeing 747 completed a test flight carrying their space rocket.
The two engineers explained why we send people and things into space. It is to?
•Explore our galaxy •Conduct research •Study climate change and weather events •Connect the world through internet and communications (GPS and Satellites) •Make Earth a better place to live!
They also explained: “What is an orbit?” ROCKETS 101 WITH VIRGIN ORBIT
They explained why astronauts on the ISS experience “weightlessness” because they are falling (like a skydiver) but their surroundings are falling too. While rockets must push satellites both up AND over the earth’s atmosphere.
The next part of the presentation was about staging. ROCKETS 101 WITH VIRGIN ORBIT
After staging they explained the three types of rocket engines.
Solid Rocket Engines:
Liquid Rocket Engines: ROCKETS 101 WITH VIRGIN ORBIT
Hybrid Rocket Engines:
After describing the types of rocket engines, they explained the Engineering paths at Virgin with the following graphic and answered questions from our students.