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Kevin Costner’s famed line in “Field of Dreams” is “If you build it, he will come.” For Carter Waggoner, the line is a little different. He came with the intention of building.

“I’ve always wanted to be an engineer. I knew when I came here, I wanted to be an engineer. I originally wanted to be a design engineer for heavy equipment,” Waggoner said.

Today, the 2020 Rapid City Stevens graduate is manager of engineering for AeroFly, a lunar startup company in Brookings. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from �ձ�av��Ƶ and a year later, through the accelerated option, earned his master’s in mechanical engineering this May. 

With degrees in hand, he became the first full-time employee of AeroFly, which was formed in 2021 by two �ձ�av��Ƶ faculty members and an alum.

AeroFly originally experimented with the concept of human and package drone transport. �ձ�av��Ƶ’s participation in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge contest changed the focus for both AeroFly and Waggoner. Both have lunar projects in mind, and AeroFly’s successful grant writing has allowed it to bring Waggoner on full time as well as paying seven graduate students part-time salaries.

“It’s great to work with hardworking students who come from �ձ�av��Ƶ, all of them mechanical engineering (majors). We’ve gotten to do some amazing projects that you wouldn’t typically get to do at other engineering schools,” Waggoner said.

Got involved as sophomore

He was referring to the excavator and rovers built for the Break the Ice competition as well as rovers built for other NASA competitions and a remote-control snowblower built for the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering’s Engineering Expo. Waggoner’s role in each of these projects has been different, but it started when he reached out to get more involved.

In spring semester of his sophomore year, Waggoner had a friend who was in a class helping students prepare for the Break the Ice lunar-simulation mining competition.

Mining? Building equipment? Sounded just like what Waggoner was looking for. He sat in on the class and quickly got involved in brainstorming design concepts and helping with computer-aided design (CAD) modeling. 

Todd Letcher, an associate professor in mechanical engineering at �ձ�av��Ƶ and chief designer for AeroFly, said, “He was the youngest member in the group (which was mostly senior design students) and joined us because he wanted to learn how to simulate mechanical systems. Of course, he did great work that semester, and I wanted to make sure I kept him with our group.”

Discovered love for CAD work

Waggoner had some CAD experience in high school and had an obvious aptitude for it. “But I basically learned SolidWorks out of necessity,” he said.

He became the CAD assembler. Fellow members of the Space Trajectory Break the Ice team would bring him ideas for the drive train or the conveyor system. Waggoner would make sure they interlocked and lined up and could eventually become a working system.

To keep Waggoner working with the group, Letcher urged him to apply for a new Lohr College of Engineering program — Future Innovators of America. He was selected in December 2022 for the inaugural class. Recipients are awarded $5,000 with $4,500 as a stipend and $500 to cover the cost of lab supplies or travel to disseminate the results of their project. 

Students are paired with a faculty member to do research.

 Waggoner, then a junior, worked under Letcher to improve the strength of 3D printed parts by testing the best way to handle and cool the parts after they have been heat treated to improve initial strength. 

Computational simulations were performed to determine appropriate heating temperatures and times and reveal the relationship between cooling methods and residual stress and strength of the 3D printed parts. The simulation results then were verified by experiments.  

A summer to remember

That wasn’t part of the Break the Ice work, but it provided another opportunity to build and provided income.

In spring semester 2023, Space Trajectory received notice that it was one of 15 finalists in the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, which carried a $1million top prize.

During the school year, Waggoner did CAD master model assembly and helped with fabrication of the excavator and two rovers. All finalists were required to conduct an excavation test during 15 consecutive days. While most Space Trajectory team members graduated and took jobs, Waggoner, Allea Klauenberg, mechanical engineering, and Eric Derr, an electrical engineering major, stayed for the summer to help faculty members Letcher and Jason Sternhagen.

It was a summer filled with equipment malfunctions, software snafus, long, hot days at a gravel pit and a downpour that almost flooded out the team.

But the group prevailed, excavating, collecting and weighing the matter for 15 consecutive days. “That summer we didn’t take any weekends off. It was really daunting, but the core group of us wanted to get stuff operational and get to the next phase (of Break the Ice). Without that group, it wouldn’t have got done,” Waggoner said.

Break the Ice — ‘really fun project’

Break the Ice was his senior design project. Waggoner was responsible for the excavation arm and material handling, meaning designing and fabricating the conveyor system on the excavator and helping with the dump truck mechanism as well as the system moving the material from the excavator to the dump truck.

The system worked well enough that Space Trajectory was one of six teams to qualify for the finals. Only one other team was comprised solely of college students.

Space Trajectory didn’t come back from the finals in Huntsville, Alabama, in June 2024 with a check, but “the really fun project” opened a world of opportunities to students. Some took jobs in the aerospace industry, while others returned to graduate school with an emphasis in aerospace engineering. All learned that students at �ձ�av��Ƶ were capable of competing with top engineering students in the U.S.

Began graduate work while an undergrad

Waggoner continued with grad school. He had already taken some undergraduate courses that counted toward his master’s degree.

His master’s degree project was started in the fall semester of his senior year — the optimization of a static screw conveyor.

“We needed a way to make a chainless conveyor” for the Space Trajectory excavator, Waggoner said. “I watched a ton of YouTube videos and stumbled upon this mechanism” that had been invented more than 20 years ago to vertically move sand out of a foundry. He changed the scope of the geometry of the conveyor and made it in sections for use in the finals.

A weld broke on the conveyor auger shaft during the finals of the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, derailing Space Trajectory’s hopes to win the contest’s $1 million prize.

But there was consolation. While traveling to Alabama, the team learned that AeroFly had received a $150,000 NASA Small Business Innovation Research contract to develop a lunar regolith (soil) conveyor system. That Phase I contract was followed by a Phase 2 contract. 

Letcher said, “In addition, we were recently awarded a TechLeap award, which helps us get our lunar conveyor flight tested in simulated lunar gravity. This concept is based on technology that we started developing at �ձ�av��Ƶ during the final phase of Break the Ice and Waggoner’s master’s thesis.”

Begins career in unique, fun niche

AeroFly operates out of an office/shop at the Research Park at �ձ�av��Ƶ. In addition to the lunar work, AeroFly also does CAD work for a company that designs electrical substations and is pursuing ag drone innovations. Klauenberg is expected to become its second fulltime employee when she completes her master’s degree.

Waggoner said there is a sense of accomplishment in becoming the first fulltime employee of a company he helped develop.

Waggoner, who turns 24 on Aug. 11, added, “It’s fun to work on such cool projects and get to do it really young. I find it fun when you get to do the CAD modeling, fabrication and testing. You get to see the design become a real thing. Also, it’s a weird subject to work on. I didn’t really expect to be working on projects like these.” 

As for the long term?

“I mainly want to find a job I enjoy every day, and so far I’ve got one. I am an engineer. So whatever I do, I want to be doing the engineering work.”