Aerobrakes — Onboarding
This is session zero — before any simulation or code, the team needs to be aligned on what this project actually is, and what the ground rules are.
Objective
by the end of this session, every student can restate the project's purpose, rules, and Phase I goal in their own words, with no notes.
Session Activities
Walk through the course overview document as a team, line by line. When you reach the AI-use rule, stop and dig in: AI can be used for consultation and mentoring at a peer level — to work step by step through a problem or improve content you've already drafted — but it will not be used to generate reports, analysis, or code for you. The benchmark is that you shouldn't need to rely on AI (or a mentor, or a teacher) more than about 20–25% of the time to accomplish your tasks. Have each student give a concrete example of what “peer-level AI use” looks like versus what “AI did it for me” looks like — this distinction matters for the whole rest of the project.
Next, set up team roles. The team assigns rotating lead roles across four areas: avionics/telemetry, controls/software, mechanical, and documentation. Leads rotate periodically so responsibility doesn't calcify into one person's job — everyone is still expected to understand and be able to explain every area, regardless of whose lead role it currently is.
Create the team's Google Site — this becomes your engineering notebook, and your mentor needs to be able to view it at any time to know your status. One requirement for the notebook is a lightweight AI-use log, so you can demonstrate how you used AI responsibly to accomplish your tasks. Also set up Google Classroom, which will be the primary way the team organizes communication and assignments.
Finally, review the Timeline section of the overview together and confirm the target windows for each phase are realistic given the team's actual overall schedule — schoolwork always comes first, and this project takes second priority.
Checkpoint
Cold-call each student to explain, unaided, what “coast phase” means and why airbrake authority is restricted to it. If a student can't answer this clearly, that gap — not finishing the walkthrough — is this session's real deliverable to close.
Maps to milestone P0.