Nick Spivak

GPA: 3.61 | Dean's List: Fall 2025 | Graduating one year early

Completed: Statics, Differential Equations, Multivariable Calculus, Calculus II, Analytical Physics IA and IB, General Chemistry I and II, Engineering Economics

In progress, Fall 2026: Dynamics, Mechatronics, Mechanics of Materials, Computer-Aided Design in MAE, Introduction to Aerospace Engineering, Analytical Physics IIA

Spring 2027: Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics, MAE Measurements with Lab, Aerospace Structures, Design of Mechanical Components

• Proposed lava tubes as the research domain and had the direction accepted by my advisor.
• Read over fifty papers on lunar habitats, lava tube structure, pressurization, and autonomous robotics to select a research direction.
• Narrowing toward characterizing whether a lava tube can hold pressure as a habitat, through rock mass strength, ceiling stability, seismic response, and meteoroid damage.
• Work aligns with NASA's Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate and its Moon Base program.

• Earned Tripoli Level 1 high power certification September 5, 2026, flying a LOC-IV X2 on an AeroTech H219T.
• Built the flight computer it carried: RP2040 in CircuitPython, two barometers and a six-axis IMU logging twelve channels to microSD at 55 Hz.
• Wrote a 1-DOF trajectory model in MATLAB, integrated with ode45 under an apogee event, and locked the predicted apogee before launch.
• Ran a 10,000-case Monte Carlo over drag, pressure, temperature, and motor impulse; correlation ranked drag at 57.6% of apogee variance and impulse at 40.6%.
• Measured peak velocity within 0.9% and peak acceleration within 0.6% of prediction, isolating the apogee error to drag and refitting C_d from 0.45 to 0.75.
• Lost an earlier vehicle to a recovery failure, traced the root cause, and rebuilt the recovery and preflight process around it.

• Designed a welded aluminum space frame in SolidWorks across five revisions, for a 215 kg single seat aircraft.
• Ran six static and buckling studies in SolidWorks Simulation, and enlarged the arm tubes after a member reached yield.
• Chose eight T-Motor V13L motors in coaxial pairs, and split the 24S battery into two independent packs to halve per-pack current.
• Built a 1:5 scale model, which showed the CAD cut lengths were not manufacturable as drawn.

Proficient: MATLAB, SolidWorks, Python, OpenRocket

Moderate: C++, SolidWorks Simulation (FEA), Simulink, CircuitPython, Git