How to get real-world launch experience: be a Ball Aerospace intern!

By Sacha Gragg 09/26/2019

1. Real World Experience

The Ball Intern Remote Sensing Team program, more commonly known as BIRST, has been a great voluntary extra-curricular project for many summer interns during the past ten weeks at Ball Aerospace. The program is grounded in offering real-world experience to interns interested in an aerospace career. Over the course of the summer interns work to build payloads, onboard objects, experiments or instruments to fly aboard one of two flight platforms: sport rocket or high-altitude balloon.

This year's BIRST program was the largest one yet, with 72 interns, 61 mentors and eight supporting administrative assistants—totaling 141 people—who were all divided into supporting six BIRST teams. The program's growth over a decade is proof of its success in getting interns enthusiastic to learn about Ball Aerospace.

"I think, and hope, that the biggest learning opportunities come from taking risks in this setting – whether in terms of learning new technical skills or stepping into a role that pushes interns out of their comfort zones," said Josh Cole, BIRST program manager and systems engineer at Ball Aerospace.

While developing flight hardware is a critical component of the program, BIRST is special because it gives interns the opportunity to work on a large, multi-disciplinary team with low risk.

“Everyone participating goes through a lot of the same steps that big programs do, but in only a couple of months,” said Taylor Waber, BIRST mentor and systems engineer at Ball Aerospace. “All of the effort and time put into making these payloads builds skills that we can take into our full-time jobs.”

Anyone interested in the aerospace business will one day be in involved in a program that could last anywhere from a few weeks to a few decades, all the while only participating in a single aspect of the entire program process. Through BIRST, however, interns get a unique perspective on the entire life cycle of a program—start to finish.

“The BIRST activity provides a compressed experience of a large part of our business” said Mike Gazarik, vice president, Engineering, Ball Aerospace. “Namely, creating a payload to accomplish and meet goals, learn about the many constraints of launching a remote payload, forming and working as a team – all in a mere eight weeks!”

Part of the BIRST real-world application for interns is through the different flight platform opportunities provided. Interns are given a choice between creating payloads to be launched on either a high-altitude balloon or a United Launch Alliance (ULA) intern created rocket.

2. Launching on a Rocket

Interns on rocket teams were able to watch their payloads lift off with the initial thrust of 4,600 pounds aboard ULA’s Future Heavy Sport Rocket.

On Saturday, July 20 at Fort Carson Army Post, a crowd of Ball Aerospace interns, executives, ULA employees and interns, and K-12 students from across the country braved the heat to witness that student rocket launch.

That BIRST rocket event would not be complete without giving homage to the space mission from 50 years ago that influenced generations of scientists and thinkers, including the ones who populate the BIRST teams.

"Apollo 11 inspired an entire generation across the globe, spawned a talented workforce in engineering and science, and added wonder in what humanity can accomplish when we work together," said Gazarik. "The BIRST launch similarly inspires us all and shows what we can do when working together."

Coinciding with the Apollo 11 Anniversary—one of the greatest scientific achievements in the past 50 years—Ball celebrated its 11th year of partnering with ULA to provide hands-on STEM education for students to inspire and further future STEM careers. For over a decade ULA interns have built and launched high-power sport rockets carrying payloads designed and built by Ball Aerospace interns as part of the BIRST program.

This year featured three BIRST team payloads that launched aboard the 35-foot-tall ULA intern-built rocket, the Future Heavy Super Sport.

"Launches are high-energy events so anytime one succeeds, it is worthy of celebration – and the journey to develop, test and be ready for launch is itself a success," Gazarik said. "Our BIRST payloads deployed and we recovered the hardware – success!"

3. Launching on a Balloon

On July 13, in a softball field in Genoa, Colorado, while the sun rose against the looming grain-escalators three additional intern teams were able to watch their payloads disappear into the atmosphere aboard a single high-altitude balloon.

Their payloads were able to capture stunning visuals of the curvature of the earth from the balloon’s altitude of 102,000 feet.

To reach that moment, however, interns, along with volunteer mentors, worked steadily week after week to design, propose, build, and test a payload that would successfully launch on the balloon. Some of the testing included scrutiny from both Edge of Space Sciences (EOSS), the high-altitude balloon provider, and United Launch Alliance (ULA), the sport rocket provider. For the first time in BIRST history the balloon teams were also able to test their payloads in a thermal vacuum chamber. The test simulated the thermal and pressure environmental conditions of altitude of up to 100,000 feet—the altitude the BIRST high-altitude balloons reach.

Whether on a rocket or balloon team, all participating interns were able to walk away with valuable skills beyond that of any regular internship.

"BIRST allows you to explore new ideas and practices while being able to broaden soft skills, meet new friends and learn something new – all while on a tight schedule," said Logan Sigala, 3D model shop intern at Ball Aerospace."

Tag(s): BIRST, Interns, STEM

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