Tag: space concordia

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Excessive spending by Space Concordia

A history of excessive spending at Space Concordia

CORRECTION: The article in question was initially taken down for revision purposes relating to generalized language. Details to the alterations are found below.

How much does it cost to build a rocket? That is the question Concordia’s Engineering and Computer Science Association (ECA) has asked Space Concordia (SC), the student association responsible for mismanaged and unorganized financial practices. Official ECA documents and board meeting transcripts provided to The Concordian reveal a history of irresponsible spending by the organization dating back to the 2020-21 academic year.

SC remains the largest student association under ECA jurisdiction, and, as of the beginning of the 2022-23 academic year, has access to the most funds of any committee under the association via a combination of ECA-approved grants, internal transfers, and external sponsorship’s, according to the societies official ECA approved budget. Despite this fact, according to reports SC spending have exceeded their ECA budget in the past, resulting in the ECA being forced to provide SC with thousands of dollars of additional funds to pay off the personal debt incurred by SC members.

Exact figures remain impossible to calculate without the ECA’s financial budgetary statements from the last three years, in which the ECA has yet to file due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

However, a senior member of SC rocketry division, who preferred to stay anonymous, estimates the cumulative costs of the personal debts they have accrued from SC projects over their tenure range into the hundreds of thousands.  

“In the past few years I spent like hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I’ve had to ask for reimbursements of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” they said.

While these price ranges seem high to the average person, the senior member says that these costs are relatively low compared to the operational budgets of most space agencies that are doing the same work, believing the price range is justified. 

“We’ve already broken multiple world records over the past four years on this project,” they said. “It’s going to be the first liquid rocket ever launched from Canadian soil. We’re working with the government to create legislation for rockets in Canada. We’ve created state-of-the-art technology. And because of that, we go through thousands of transactions a year and hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.”

In addition, SC was accused of violating several key ECA bylaws regulating the spending habits of student organization under their jurisdiction. These actions include opening a secondary bank account for SC use, separate from its official ECA-monitored bank account which is in violation of Section D.3.3. of the ECA’s bylaws, and failing to keep accurate and up-to-date documentation of their expenses in accordance to bylaws D.3.5 and D.3.6.

These transgressions culminated in SC being put on extended probation by the ECA’s Board of Directors on Aug. 24, 2021. SC was informed by the ECA that they must comply with several conditions relating to the organization’s financial practices or “face dissolution” of their association, in the follow up letter sent by the ECA. Further steps were taken by the ECA to investigate SC financial practices dating back to the 2018 academic year.

In the same letter dated to Oct. 27, 2021, the ECA confirmed that SC had complied with a majority of the demands of the probation period sufficient to continue their probation.

However, the ECA did note that the organization failed to cease “all activity during the time of [SC’s] probation” and had yet to hand over all expense receipts to the association. At the same time, an anonymous source within the ECA has confirmed that no amount of student funds associated with SC are unaccounted for. The anonymous source made sure to dispel rumors of financial malpractice.

In an email sent to The Concordian, ECA president Sierra Campbell confirmed that SC “successfully met the terms of the BOD [Board of Directors] to end their probation” as of Dec. 3, 2021. Campbell made sure to stress that the violations occurred during a previous mandate and that the current SC leadership have “worked extensively alongside the ECA executive to create clear understanding of internal payment procedures as well as communication to members of the club,” stated the email.

Despite these measures, a financial blacklist was established by the ECA in a board of directors meeting on Sunday, Aug. 21, 2022, to address the “Space Concordia Member Issue” the motivation read. The blacklist prevented individuals from having any of their expenses reimbursed through ECA funds.

  • The original Deck: “A history of excessive spending puts Space Concordia’s future into question,” was misleading, insinuating that Space Concordia’s future is still in jeopardy. As of Dec. 3, 2021. Space Concordia has passed the probation period.
  • A previous version of this story mentions that SC receives “the most funds out of any committee under the association (ECA).” The ECA provides the most funds annually to the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers).
  • A previous version of this story mentions that SC “consistently exceeded their ECA budget,” the word “consistently” was improperly used.
  • A previous version of this story mentions preamble of a quote from an anonymous member of SC stating that the member “estimates his personal debts accrued by SC project range into the hundreds of thousands.” This has been altered to “estimates the cumulative costs of the personal debts they have accrued from SC projects over their tenure.” This is validated by the following quote from the aforementioned member.
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Space Concordia flies to Poland for European Rover Challenge

Space Concordia competed at the European Rover Challenge, an international space and robotics event in Kielce, Poland. Photo courtesy of Space Concordia.

Space Concordia competes in the eighth edition of the European Rover Challenge in Poland

Last weekend, Space Concordia (SC) competed in the 2022 edition of the European Rover Challenge (ERC), an international space and robotics event based on real-life scenarios from European Space Agency and NASA missions. The event is centred around technological developments for space exploration, the ultimate goal of the ERC being to eventually become a benchmark and test trial for planetary robotic activities. 

The competition allows teams from all over the world to present their mobile robot designs and compete against each other. 

SC is dedicated to the development of space technology and is organized into four divisions: robotics, rocketry, spacecraft and space health. The student organization was founded in 2010 and has since grown to over 150 members at Concordia.

From Sept. 9 to 11, the Robotics team travelled to Kielce, Poland, to test out its own Rover robot in a Martian-like environment.

This year’s ERC was held on the world’s largest artificial Martian track in the Kielce University of Technology. Eleven people from Space Concordia joined the competition in-person. 

The team ran into some complications that limited the amount of time they had to assemble the Rover. This prevented the team from completing one of the four tasks they had set out to do: navigation, maintenance, science and collection and probing. 

“The assembly was frantic but we did it,” said Philippe Fernie, mechanical co-lead for the Robotics team. “We got the Rover at three o’clock on Friday which was the first day of competition and everyone got together to assemble it. We got it done within four hours, which is very fast.” 

The team still managed to go through three of the ERC challenges. The various tasks included trying out a hypothesis they wanted to test in a Martian environment and manoeuvring the Rover to put probes into the soil and scoop out dirt to conduct some tests. These exercises allowed the robotics team to practice with their Rover in real-life conditions. 

“It really helped the team too, I think, to see if the Rover could actually perform the tasks and be out in an actual competition environment rather than just seeing it go around the University,” said William Wells, the technical lead and software co-lead from the Robotics team. 

Wells explained that each year, the ERC changes the artificial Martian track to model a different type of location on Mars. 

“This year it was a volcanic location […] it was really cool to actually see it and get to put a Rover out there and drive around,” Wells said.

After the stress of the competition, the team is tired yet happy to have had the opportunity to attend the ERC and practice their skills. 

“It was an incredible experience actually getting to go to a competition in person because most of us on the team never got to go to an in-person competition since the pandemic,” said Wells.

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What has Space Concordia been up to?

The student-run organization is racing to make it into space

Space Concordia is a student-run organization aiming to foster a professional learning environment in which students can develop their skills via experiential learning.

The association is composed of four official divisions: Spacecraft, Rocketry, Robotics, and Space Health, each one with teams that work year-round to develop projects and research.

“We are a big organization, so each member can decide to join the teams that suit their interest[s] and [schooling],” said Vanesa Gonzales, who is in charge of outreach. “Most of the time a new member joins one team under one division. Then, as they understand the project, they can take on more than one role.”

The organization involves interdisciplinary work that is open to students of all academic backgrounds.

But Space Concordia hasn’t made it into space … yet.

“The Rocketry division is working on a rocket that reaches the limitation of the upper atmosphere and space at 420,000 feet. It is going to be tested in May 2021,” said Gonzales.

The rocket they are developing is part of the Base 11 Space Challenge, a contest to be the first student-run group to hit the Kármán Line. The Kármán Line is situated at an altitude of 100 km and defines the boundary between space and Earth.

“Hopefully by May 2021, we will be the first university to make it into space,” said Melize Ferrus, President of Space Concordia.

Until they make it to the final frontier, what’s next for Space Concordia?

“The Robotics division is working on implementing an autonomy software system in their rover,” said Ferrus.

The software would enable the rover to test samples of matter via spectroscopy, which is used to study the molecular composition of a sample. In this case, the sample would be soil, allowing for them to see if it is feasible to sustain life on other planets.

“We would like to continue developing technologies for remote medicine that can be applied on Earth or [in] space,” said Gonzales.

The Space Health division will continue to do so via Project 1.0, which involves researching the body’s response to force changes by studying the effects of gravity on the heart long-term. The project will be tested on a rocket made by the Rocketry division.

Project 2.0 is to develop a simulated cardiovascular system to study Orthostatic Hypertension, a medical condition characterized by a sudden increase in blood pressure when a person stands up.

But don’t let the words ‘space’ and ‘engineering’ turn you away from Space Concordia. According to Ferrus, not all members are in exclusively STEM fields. Past and current team members have been students enrolled in Communications, the Faculty of Fine Arts, and the John Molson School of Business.

“We want to be an organization that fosters creativity in any way, and creativity rears its head in many different facets,” said Ferrus. “It doesn’t matter what your skill level is. By the time you leave, it won’t be your skill level anymore. We’re happy to foster new talent.”

For more information about Space Concordia visit http://www.spaceconcordia.ca.

Visuals courtesy of Space Concordia.

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Space Concordia is reaching for the stars, and the millions.

Space Concordia unloaded all the new projects they are working on––such as a Mars rover and plans to send a satellite to the International Space Station––at their annual info session on Jan. 24.

The info session included an announcement that they are participating in a USD $1 million competition to launch a rocket to space.

Hannah Jack Halcro, the president of Space Concordia, described the group as a grassroots, student-run space agency at Concordia University.

“We really function as a standalone space agency that has many projects going on at once,” said Halcro. She explained that while most schools’ space groups focus on a single project, such as rocketry, Space Concordia has four divisions, all creating different projects.

Its newest project, Space Health, began just last year. It focuses on ways to improve astronauts’ physical health while in space. They are researching and experimenting on ways to create a complete medical lab the size of a computer microchip. To do this, Space Health needs to understand how various cells and chemicals react to being in zero-gravity.

According to Halcro, Space Health is working with the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) to use a parabolic flight, which is a modified airplane that simulates zero-gravity. This will help Space Health gather information on how cells react in zero-gravity.

The Robotics division is currently working on creating a Mars rover. It plans on competing in the Canadian International Rover Challenge in August.

The Spacecraft division has temporarily stopped competing. Instead, it’s focusing on a contract with the Canadian CubeSat Project, which was announced by the CSA in 2017. The project is to create a type of satellite called CubeSat, and launch it into space from the International Space Station in 2021.

“It’s not like launching a rocket where you get it back,” said Halcro, who explained this satellite will be the most advanced satellite they have created, as it will be going to space and handled by astronauts at the International Space Station. Space Concordia will have to ensure the satellite won’t jeopardize the safety of the astronauts.

“It’s going to be in space for a long time,” said Halcro. “It needs to work with international law, there are a lot of restrictions.”

The Rocketry division has competed four times at both the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition and Spaceport America Cup. In the 2018 Spaceport America Cup, the Rocketry division had to design a supersonic rocket for the competition to break the sound barrier. They won the competition with the highest altitude of over 30,000 feet. Halcro stated that winning that competition made the Rocketry Division want to move on to bigger things, and it has signed up for the Base 11 Space Challenge in May.

The challenge is to build a rocket that will leave earth’s atmosphere and go into space. The winning school will be awarded USD $1 million.

Halcro explained that this competition will be the most difficult one Space Concordia has ever done, as this rocket must travel 100 kilometers to reach space––90 kilometers higher than any space rocket the group has built before.

Another difficulty is that Space Concordia will have to develop another type of engine to reach their goal. For the Base 11 Space Challenge, they must build their own ‘liquid’ engine, which uses kerosene and liquid oxygen. Space Concordia has previously only used store-bought ‘solid’ engines, which are basically an explosive tube that detonates in one direction.

“You light the fuse, you run away, and then it goes,” said Halcro, who explained that Space Concordia is not allowed to make their own ‘solid’ engines because they are like bombs.

“There is no way we are going back to shooting 30,000 feet rockets after this,” said Halcro, stating that no matter what happens at the competition, Space Concordia will continue to expand its skills and try the impossible.

Space Concordia has always had a dream,” said Oleg Khalimonov, the chief executive of the Rocketry division. “If you wanna go to space you always got to dream big. We don’t care how unlikely it is, but we are going to try either way.”

 

Photo and graphic by Laurence B.D. and @sundaeghost

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Concordia Student Union News

Engineering students show up en masse at CSU meeting

In support of clubs ranging from Space Concordia to UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) Concordia, dozens of students from Concordia University’s School of Engineering and Computer Science attended Concordia Student Union’s (CSU) on Sept. 18.

The meeting was largely focused on allocating funds for a variety of on-campus initiatives and organizations. Engineering students from a variety of clubs presented funding requests to the CSU.

Space Concordia is an on-campus organization dedicated to building the first student-designed rocket capable of entering outer space. According to Space Concordia’s website, the group’s rocketry division has never had a launch failure in the last four years. The organization’s President, Hannah Halcro, presented to CSU and secured funding for another year. Halcro said she did not expect the CSU’s overwhelmingly positive reaction.

“I’m floored and surprised and so so so happy,” Halcro wrote in a statement to The Concordian. “The CSU’s support means so much, to not just me – I think I can speak for all of us involved in technical projects at Concordia.”

There are eight seats allocated to the School of Engineering and Computer Sciences on CSU’s Council of Representatives. Six of the seats remain vacant with only two councillors serving.

Désirée Blizzard, CSU finance coordinator, and fourth-year engineering student, said in previous years she was not involved with on-campus politics because of work. Although Blizzard was unable to partake, she said she has friends who are involved in clubs and need more funding. “I was always kind of jealous at the intensity they go at their projects,” said Blizzard in an interview with The Concordian. “I also know how much in engineering you need to rely on technology.”

UAV Concordia is a student club that competes internationally with UAV technology, such as drones. They requested newer computers. According to representatives from the club presenters, members often have to camp while travelling due to budgetary constraints.

This year, UAV Concordia received funding to continue operating and upgrade its existing technology.

Blizzard said that supporting on-campus clubs like Space Concordia or UAV Concordia assists the clubs financially and also symbolically. She said providing funds to engineering clubs shows students in those programs that CSU values them.

“Breathing life into these relationships between CSU and engineering, if anything, would encourage some engineering students to run for council,” said Blizzard.

After the engineering presentations finished, many of the students left the meeting. Following the CSU’s approval of the Space Concordia budget, Halcro said she felt encouraged by CSU listening to engineering student’s concerns.

 

Graphic by @sundaeghost

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Student Life

Shooting for the stars

Space Concordia aims to launch first civilian liquid-propelled rocket

The rocketry division of Space Concordia is participating in the Base 11 Space Challenge, a $1 million race to develop the world’s first civilian liquid-propelled rocket to go to space.

Since its inception in 2010, Space Concordia has won several national and international competitions, including two first-place prizes at the Spaceport America Cup in 2018. The student society consists of over 200 students from various academic fields who are separated into the spacecraft, robotics and rocketry subdivisions. Today, the rocketry division is taking on its biggest challenge yet: going to space.

“No student group has ever succeeded in what we are trying to do,” said Hannah Jack Halcro, president of Space Concordia. “There’s no accounting for just how completely above and beyond the rocketry division is going with the space rocket project. Very little of what we do at Space Concordia is covered in our courses. The other 90 per cent is willpower, teamwork and good research.”

The Base 11 Space Challenge is a competition that encourages students to be the first to design, build and launch a liquid-propelled rocket to an altitude of 100 kilometres. This altitude is referred to as the Karman line, which represents the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. Schools across North America are competing for the chance to make history and win $1 million in prize money. If Space Concordia is successful, they will have built the most powerful amateur rocket motor in history.

“It’s insanely difficult, but you do these things because they are difficult,” said Khalimonov. “If you don’t think you can win, what’s the point in trying?”

“The dream was always to get to space,” said Rocketry Lead Oleg Khalimonov. “So we said, ‘Fuck the competitions. We’re going to do this; we’re going to build this rocket and we’re going to go to space.’ That’s why we decided, for the first time, to not enter into any other competitions, drop all side projects, and just consolidate all of our efforts and work very, very, very hard on this one crazy task.”

The first phase of the competition recently passed in March. Students produced a document of their designs for the rocket, its safety plan, as well as an outreach and diversity strategy. Space Concordia students are currently in the testing phase. They have built parts of the rocket and are preparing to test their engines.

“We’re taking this competition exceptionally seriously,” said Khalimonov. “We’re working night and day. […] The preliminary design review is basically a summary of all the work we’ve done to date on the rocket put into one big document. I’m proud to say it’s one of the most impressive documents I’ve ever worked on. It’s about 600 pages.”

The most prominent challenge the group faces is their lack of funding. Space Concordia is financed through sponsorships and donations. However, even a fraction of the project can add up to thousands of dollars.

“Imagine if the Apollo missions had a budget smaller than buying a house,” said Halcro. “Everything we are doing is so much bigger now, and our growth is so fast that our sponsorship team is having a hard time keeping up.”

Despite the obstacles they face, Space Concordia students are hopeful and determined to accomplish this milestone feat. The competition is the biggest challenge the rocketry division has ever taken on, and the team is working hard to achieve their longtime goal of launching a rocket to the edge of space.

“It’s insanely difficult, but you do these things because they are difficult,” said Khalimonov. “If you don’t think you can win, what’s the point in trying?”

Feature photo courtesy of Oleg Khalimonov

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Space Concordia fee-levy request denied

Space Concordia president Mark Snidal argued his group should receive a fee-levy during a CSU special council meeting on March 5. Photo by Étienne Lajoie

Space Concordia president Mark Snidal argued his group should receive a fee-levy during a CSU special council meeting on March 5. Photo by Étienne Lajoie

Group seeks approval to ask students for $0,16 per credit fee-levy; complaint policy questioned

Space Concordia president Mark Snidal went to the March 5 Concordia Student Union (CSU) special council meeting hoping council would approve asking the student body if they would accept a $0.16 per credit fee-levy for his organization, effective Summer 2018.

“Over time, our scope has expanded […] more recently we’ve started including projects from students outside the scope of engineering,” said Snidal when asked why he believed Space Concordia should be receiving money from Concordia’s student body through a fee-levy.

In addition to their skepticism about Space Concordia’s benefit to the entire student body—and, therefore, whether it merited a fee-levy—the union called into question the functioning of the organization’s proposed complaint policy, which would be implemented along with a fee-levy.

Snidal explained that a permanent committee for dispute resolutions would be formed in order to address complaints made by members “arising out of or related to the Constitution, or out of any aspect of the operations of the Association,” the constitution reads.

The committee, Snidal suggested, would be chaired by a Space Concordia executive. It would also consist of a temporarily appointed member from Space Concordia, as well as a member of the CSU council and two students at large.

Certain council members pointed out that a conflict of interest may arise if the organization names its own chair, and council member Rowan Gaudet said he’d never seen the CSU appoint someone to sit on a complaints board for a fee-levy group.

“I think that’s not really our place […] that’s not something the CSU is responsible for, and also the CSU can’t promise it will go well,” Gaudet said.

“I think it’s really important that the complaint process is done in a way that the people coming forward feel comfortable and safe, and not necessarily that they are going to be outed by a committee right away when the committee is being chosen,” added Sophie Hough-Martin, a council member who sits on the student union’s policy committee. Hough-

Martin also recommended the group include consent and sensitivity training for its members.

According to CSU council member Aliénor Lougerstay—who also works as Space Concordia’s vice-president for marketing—the organization only recently received feedback from the union about their constitution, which includes the complaint policy, despite having submitted the proposed constitution to the CSU policy committee in December.

Lougerstay said the original proposal for the committee for dispute resolutions was that it be internal. However, the CSU policy committee noted that, since a person might file a complaint against the Space Concordia executive body, it couldn’t be internal.

“We tried to figure out something, so that’s how we came up with the idea [of having a CSU member on the committee.],” Lougerstay said.

In the end, the CSU council voted in favour of referring Space Concordia’s fee-levy request—including the complaint policy—back to the student union policy committee for review.

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A look at Concordia’s stars

Photo by Nelly Serandour-Amar.

Space Concordia shares its victories with the rest of the university

Space Concordia have just returned from several summer competitions, including a first place win.

Space Concordia’s team placed first in Canada during their first competition of the summer— the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge (CSDC), which was held on June 16. This competition requires teams to design and build a small research satellite known as a “CubeSat” or a “nanosatellite.” After construction, the satellites  must undergo full launch qualification testing.

Eight Canadian Universities participated in this challenge, including Montreal’s Polytechnique, who landed in third place. Space Concordia President Nicholas Moore said Montreal dominating the podium was a first for the city.

The second competition Space Concordia attended was the International Rocketry Engineering Competition (IREC), which lasted a week and wrapped up late this August in Utah. The Concordia team brought back the second place prize, while École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS) finished in first place. This international competition brought together more than 50 schools from around the world to design rockets capable of reaching an altitude of 3048 meters or higher. Space Concordia’s rocket, Aurelius, flew to 3395 meters and was recovered less than a mile from the launch site, showing the quality of the research done prior to the construction of the rocket. . Space Concordia’s rocketry division won second place with Aurelius.

When not competing, the club was working on a different project: Icarus. Icarus is the group’s first attempt at creating a flying high-altitude balloon. These types of balloons are designed to expose equipment and scientific charge, which is a unit of matter, in near-space areas. The two balloons they created reached an altitude of 24 kilometres, extending halfway through the stratosphere.

In addition to this project, the club is currently developing a ground station to communicate with satellites.

Moore also mentioned some of the new projects that the club has planned for this year. “The rocketry team is planning to feature a pitted tube that will stick out of their rocket,” he said. “This tube will be placed right up the top of the rocket, taking air samples for more accurate airspeed.”

The club is divided into three categories: rocketry, spacecraft and robotics.

The rocketry division participates at the IREC every year. The competition challenges teams to send a 10 pound experimental payload, which is a type of satellite, to an altitude of 3048 meters before returning the entire rocket safely to the ground.

The spacecraft division concentrates on the design, construction and operation of satellites. The team is also divided into a space group, whose dedicated to building the satellites and a ground group, who works on operating and communicating with these satellites from Earth.

The club’s final division, robotics, has four main subdivisions: software, power, electrical and mechanical. Their main competition is the University Rover Challenge (URC) in southern Utah. This competition challenges the teams to design and build the next generation of Mars rovers—ones that will eventually work alongside astronauts exploring Mars. This competition is organized by the Mars Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting human exploration and settlement of the red planet.

Moore invites all students from the university to join the club. He said all undergraduate students—in any field of study—have a place at Space Concordia. From those attending John Molson School of Business to students studying the arts, Moore said that they can be a valuable addition to the club.

Students who wish to participate in Space Concordia projects are welcome to visit their office in the Hall building, on the 10th floor (1029.7).

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