Imagination Soars With Sony’s Rocket Project

The first rocket to reach the moon had less computing power than the latest Sony VAIO series notebooks. Can a new Sony VAIO design, operate and launch a rocket? Find out at The Rocket Project. Over the course of the next few months, eight students assisted by Tom Atchison and the Rocket Mavericks team will attempt to design, launch and operate a rocket using new Sony VAIO CW, F, and Z series notebooks.

These computers will be essential in the design stage, facilitating all Computer-Aided Engineering – CAD, aerodynamic simulation, computational fluid dynamics, dispersion analysis and Monte Carlo simulation. VAIO computers will also power the flight simulation software – ASTOS, RS-Pro, and Rocksim – and facilitate calculations for dispersion analysis, gas dynamics, aerodynamic stability, dynamic stability, structural loading, thermal heat transfer flux, fin flutter stability and much, much more.

On April 12, 2010, the Rocket Project students will travel to the famous Black Rock Desert in Nevada to put their experiment to the ultimate test by launching their rocket as high as possible into the atmosphere. A VAIO computer will operate GPS tracking, telemetry, avionics monitoring, video and anything else the team can imagine. Be sure to check out the constantly updated Rocket Project page, flickr stream and YouTube videos of the project.

As part of the Rocket Project powered by Sony and Intel, Sony Electronics has pledged to donate $1 to ReadySetLaunch, Inc. for every new fan of the Sony Electronics Facebook page leading up to the April 2010 conclusion of the Rocket Project, up to $25,000.