Educational Outreach
Safety and Simplicity
Hybrid motors are making their impact around the world of aerospace engineering, where multiple student teams around the country are competing to achieve the biggest and most powerful hybrid engine's ever created. These engine's are being chosen as the subject for these design competitions for their relative simplicity, and access to the needed materials. Universities feel comfortable letting students experiment with these engines as the dangers can be mitigated with the intrinsically safe nature of the engines and the strict safety reviews these teams are subject to. Universities are typically proud of the work of their student teams produce, with big shocking videos of towering rockets being launched or massive explosions that are released through media outlets. The reach of these events to a broad audience brings a lot of attention to the university: good or bad. This makes these projects an attractive choice for engineering departments looking to make a splash in the media landscape.
Worldwide Impact
Engineering competitions are a staple in the educational systems of the western world. Many schools from around the world come together with international competitions to see who can make the largest or most efficient hybrid engines. This has become one of the few instances where international teams can compete with each other, with no real rules or restrictions, to push the bounds of innovation. These competitions highlights the different engineering approaches taken by each organization. With the open-source nature of these projects, meaning that all designs and software being released to the world for free, design groups are free to confer, debate, and learn from each other about the approach they took to the project. Projects like this stimulate the aerospace industry, and cause engineers to go into the field with a new found understanding and intuition about how rocket engines work.
