By Marlene McTigue
Capital Region Independent Media
RAVENA — In every small town across America, in home offices, at kitchen tables, in basements, in garages and in old barns, human ingenuity is happening. We are a society that teaches our children “you can do whatever you set your mind to, with hard work, you can be whatever you want to be, and our children are listening.
In those nondescript, out-of-the-way places, ideas are being hatched, business plans are being developed and in the case of one young man from Ravena, aerospace engineering is happening.
Should you have been in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert under a cerulean blue sky, one September day last fall, you would have seen and heard some very happy Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students rejoicing. Among them 20-year-old Lucas Long of Ravena, son of Rich Long III and Pamela Long.
Long, along with his teammates in RPI’s Ascendents Research Group, broke a record when their 16-foot tall, 70-pound rocket, Headstrong, reached a height of 46,000 feet. The flight is being lauded as the highest (for a student rocket team) of its kind.
The team was so emboldened by their success that they are preparing a space shot for 2025 — when they will look to break the Kármán Line, the point 330,000 feet above sea level that marks the end of Earth’s atmosphere and the beginning of outer space.
To say that rocketry has become a focus of Long’s career pursuits and how he spends a significant portion of his free time would be an understatement. The RPI senior says he has known that he wanted to be an aerospace engineer for years.
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
Long, who attended RCS schools through 8th grade, spent his high school years at Tech Valley High School, an experience he says helped to solidify his interest in aerospace technology.
Any RCS student can be entered into a lottery for a chance to attend Tech Valley High. Long said he became aware of the opportunity when representatives from the school came to his middle school for lunch one day.
“When I heard they were coming, I thought to myself, ‘I don’t want to go there,’ so I just went out for recess,” he said. “But the next day I just couldn’t stop thinking about it, ‘it was just in the back of my mind for the whole day and then I decided I have to look into this.”
It was a decision that would shape his future and lead him down paths most of us will never tread.
“Tech Valley is a very different school,” said Long. “The whole thing is like ‘teamwork, collaboration and communication.’ I really learned how to lead a team there,” Long said. “I learned how to start things, I started a few different clubs while I was there: an SAT Study Club, Film Club, a few other things.”
Long’s ability to forge essential relationships was also nurtured there.
“The school does projects with law firms and engineering firms, local businesses, so I had a lot of practice talking to professionals and working with teams to get things done,” he said. “I always knew I wanted to be an aerospace engineer, so that’s what led me to go to RPI.”
“I didn’t have the best grades in 9th and 10th grade so my advisor really talked to me, and he said, at this point I don’t think you have the grades for RPI even if you really do turn it around, but I think you should try,” he said.
Long took that as a challenge and after that conversation he says he was able to obtain near-perfect grades in all his classes. His turnaround led to his acceptance at the prestigious school.
PASSIONS IGNITED
“At the end of our freshman year at RPI, my friend and I were like, ‘let’s just make a rocket and launch it!’ So, we did,” he said.
The duo then took to Lucus’ garage and made a small rocket out of cardboard.
“We didn’t have a lab at RPI yet, so we just made it in my garage in Ravena. We called it Long Labs,” Long said with a mischievous laugh that belies that he really is only 20 years old, despite the fact that he is breaking aerospace engineering records.
“Over the whole summer we just talked about making experimental rockets, big rockets. We did our research and stayed connected throughout the summer and then when we got back, we went full in on it!”
The pair started out small.
“We started making sugar motors, which are simple to make. Sugar motors suck,” Long said enthusiastically, “but it was our minimum viable product that we could make to talk to a professor to see if we can get lab space at school.”
The team got lucky.
“One professor believed in us and gave us the lab space we needed to get going,” he said excitedly. “Then we started getting our high-powered rocketry certifications and that’s when we started The Ascendants.”
HARD WORK PAYS OFF
The journey to launch was long and labor intensive.
“We put together the team. We started making more complex rocket motors at a smaller scale,” he said. “We built testing infrastructure to test it because we have to adjust the chemical composition according to our goal. And then we started scaling up pretty rapidly as we started getting funding from the school for the club. It took a lot of our own money up front to get to the point where we could get money from the school to start the club.”
Even the prep work was intense.
“We had to write the SOPs (the standard operating procedure documents required for lab work) before we could get started. They are like 40 pages long and we had to write about 10 of them!” Long said. “It took months of just going back and forth with them before we could start making the propellant.”
“Then in September we all went to Black Rock to get our L3 certifications, which will allow us to go for the space shot.”
The team’s work, and its expectations, just continued to grow.
“We have been expanding our operation, we have grown a lot. We’re expanding the size of the motors we make right now. We’re currently at 98mm in diameter,” he said.
NEXT STEPS
Long and the lab are hard at work preparing for an upcoming competition where they will face off against some of the top schools in the country.
“In June we are entering a competition called Spaceport America Cup where we will be competing in New Mexico,” he said. “We’ll be competing against Cornell, MIT, Berkeley, Columbia, every prestigious school you can think of.”
“We are there to win, but this will also be part of our space shot,” Long added.
They have set their sights on next year for their big launch.
“The current plan to complete the space shot is going to be in two stages. We want to do it in 2025,” he said. “We have to do all the research first. We have to show that the rocket can land so the FAA can actually clear us to launch it.”
“It’s a lot of work, but it’s paying off,” Long added.
If you are an aerospace enthusiast, you can be a part of The Ascendant’s excitement, too. The team has corporate sponsorship opportunities available, including an invitation to join them at the launch as they attempt to break the Kármán Line. Email them at wue9@rpi.edu or call 509-294-8880 for more information.
