Hi, I am Simon Bambey.

I am an Engineering Physics graduate currently working as a mechanical design engineer on thermal systems at Tesla. During my degree, I spent my time building liquid-propellant rockets as part of a student team that I founded in 2016. My main passions are in aerospace and clean technology, and I am keen to do whatever it takes to advance these fields for a better future.

Projects

UBC Rocket

2016 - 2020

In 2016, as I was starting in Engineering Physics, I founded the UBC Rocket student engineering design team. Over the next four years, most of my free time was spent working on a large number of very exciting technical projects, while at all times growing and improving the team. The biggest projects I led or took part in are also shown here.

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Spaceshot Rocket

2019 - 2020

As our liquid propellant rocket engine project was showing signs of success, UBC Rocket also joined the Base11 Space Challenge with the aim of launching a single stage liquid propellant rocket above the Kármán line.

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Liquid Propellant Rocket Engine Test Stand

2019 - 2020

Equipped with the experience from working at Rocket Lab on the propulsion team, I started leading the effort of building a portable liquid propellant test stand capable of supporting rocket engines producing in excess of 25kN of thrust.

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Cold Flow Rig

2019

To quantify the flow behaviour of our rocket engine injectors, I designed and built a water flow rig. This rig feeds water at a predetermined pressure from a large pressure vessel through our engine hardware and measures both the mass flow rate and pressure at the injector inlet. The flow rate measurement is taken using a Coriolis flow meter which measures mass flow directly and is very accurate.

This flow rig has seen extensive use but is now being retired in favour of installing Coriolis flow meters directly on the rocket engine test stand. We found that measuring the flow behaviour with water was not consistenly scalable to the flow behaviour of other liquids as we would see during an actual engine hot fire.

Torch Igniter

2019

A fellow UBC Rocket team member had designed and fabricated a torch igniter prototype. To qualify it, I led a test campaign of over 60 hot fire tests to become familiar with the igniter and to ensure it functions reliably. This test campaign led to several design changes and we ultimately gained the confidence to use this igniter design for our future engine tests.

Since the igniter has been developed, it has been successfully used during all three engine tests completed to date.

Liquid Propellant Rocket Engine

2017 - 2018

After having launched Cypress, I started leading early efforts to develop a suborbital, spacebound rocket powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine. First, I led the development of a heat sink rocket engine.

At the time I had not yet gained much experience with liquid propellant rocketry, so my time was spent reading the classic liquid propellant rocketry textbooks to learn the fundamentals. I co-designed the first engine and spent several hundred hours in the machine shop fabricating parts. I conducted hydrostatic leak checks and flow tests on the engine, and ultimately this would be the first engine we successfully hot fired two years later.

Cypress: Solid-Motor Sounding Rocket

2016-2017

In the first year of UBC Rocket, we built a sounding rocket that competed in and won the most competitive category of the Spaceport America Cup.

I led the technical aspects of the project and in the process gained significant mechanical and electrical design experience, and worked extensively in the machine shop and with carbon fibre composites. As would become the norm for my entire degree, I spent at least as much time on this project for UBC Rocket, as I spent on all my classes combined.

MVP: Competition Robot

Summer 2017

As part of the engineering physics summer program, I spent 6 weeks developing a robot full-time with a group of three friends. The robot competed in a competition between all second-year engineering physics students. The robot was built entirely from scratch by our team.

My responsibilities on the team varied greatly. I developed mechanical components using the waterjet cutter, laser cutter and 3D printer, I worked with motors and conducted significant testing of our mechanical components after integration, and I spent a significant amount of time writing software that evaluates sensor data to determine the behaviour of the robot.

UAS Antenna Tracker

2015 - 2016

I developed the electronics and software, and assisted with the mechanical build for an antenna tracker used to track drones. The tracking software interfaces with the drone using a protocol called Mavlink and receives live telemetry. It then calculates a yaw and a pitch angle for the antenna and drives two stepper motors in the appropriate directions. Feedback on the actual position of the antenna is provided by an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) mounted to the antenna plate.

Working with the IMU has been a challenge, as drift in the output persists to be an issue. In the future, I am planning to replace the IMU with a mechanical feedback that does not have the drift issues.

DialUp: Laser Communication

2016

As part of a class final project, I led team of three students that built a laser transceiver capable of transmission rates of up to 0.7kB/s, close to the theoretically determined limit for the hardware used. The project led to an invitation for presentation at IEMCON 2016.

In addition, I developed a custom communication protocal that makes use of the transceivers to permit transfer of text messages. This taught me a lot about how communication protocols are efficiently implemented and how error checking works. I combined the protocol with a chat server that a teammate developed which allowed us to demo a fully functional chat webapp that transferred messages via our transceiver across the classroom.

flightcrew.io

2016 & Earlier

flightcrew.io is a job board that I developed in Ruby on Rails. It automatically matches pilots with jobs appropriate for their experience level. The functionality includes a detailed sign up system which allows users to enter their qualifications such as flight hours, licenses, ratings and more. A comprehensive matching algorithmn I developed, then matches pilots with jobs they are eligible for. Furthermore, I created an extensive back-end for adding and updating jobs on the site.

The source code is available on GitHub and a live demo can be seen hosted on Heroku (may take a few seconds to load).

manifest.space

2016 & Earlier

manifest.space is a log of SpaceX launches that compiles basic information, as well as video, images and other media. It was a passion project for me but I have not found the time to keep it updated since I started my degree. The project is a Ruby on Rails app and was a great way for me to fiddle with different libraries and tools that I wanted to further explore. The source code is available on GitHub and the app remains available hosted by Heroku (may take a few seconds to load).

Resume

Work

Mechanical Design Engineer, Tesla

2020 - Present
Fremont, California, USA

At Tesla, I am currently working on vehicle thermal systems.

Propulsion Intern, Rocket Lab USA

2018
Auckland, New Zealand

At Rocket Lab, I was responsible for Kick Stage (now Photon) testing. This involved work on rocket engine test stands, hot fire testing, data analysis and processing, performance determination, preparing hardware for flight, and more.

Systems Engineering Intern, Urthecast

2017
Vancouver, Canada

At Urthecast, I developed software that evaluates the performance of different image acquisition planning algorithms. In addition, I used Systems Tool Kit (STK) to model constellations and plan acqusitions. Based on my work, I led an effort to advance the design of on-board processing systems with in-house and external experts.

Education

Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering Physics

Class of 2020
The University of British Columbia - Vancouver, Canada