Cal Poly graduate launches into career with SpaceX | CPT PPP Coverage

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One of the many graduates this weekend is Matthew Bornhorst, who is staying local to pursue his dreams in aerospace engineering.

“That’s our first liquid rocket engine, so we’ve spent the last two weeks here on campus really getting it to ‘hot fire,’ which is kind of the big achievement — actually getting to produce thrust and getting the full system to be working,” said Bornhorst.

Bornhorst found his passion for rockets during his freshman year thanks to the Cal Poly Space Systems Club.

“That’s what I was driven to do is kind of solve complex problems, and I think rockets are just one of the most complex problems to solve,” said Bornhorst.

He worked his way up to being president of the club, taking on exciting projects.

“We compete in a rocketry competition every year called Far,” added Bornhorst.

Last summer, he interned at Frontier Aerospace Corporation doing propulsion testing.

Mustang News — Cal Poly’s award-winning student newspaper — also played a big role during the Colorado native’s time at the university, covering live sporting events both on and off camera.

“Those are always the most fun and those are probably the most similar to engineering because, especially with the rocket engine testing, it’s a lot of like the control room for live broadcast. It’s not that dissimilar from a control room for rocket engine testing,” explained Bornhorst. “It’s a lot of buttons and everything needs to happen when it happens. ”

As his time at Cal Poly comes to an end, Bornhorst says that he wants students to take risks and learn by doing.

“It’s going to be hard and you’re going to struggle, but you’re going to be able to get through it, and you’re going to learn a lot in that process,” said Bornhorst.

On Monday, he watched a rocket take off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, but that’ll be his last time watching from the sidelines.

“I was lucky enough to get a job with SpaceX to be a launch engineer out at Vandenberg, so that means that I’m on the booster refurb team,” explained Bornhorst. “SpaceX, they land their rockets now, and before you send them back up to space, you have to clean them and make sure that everything’s working. [I’m] going to be on the team that basically does all the inspections, checkouts, cleans the rockets and then puts it all together and then rolls out to the pad to launch again.”

For Bornhorst, the sky is, in fact, not the limit.

“I’d love to be involved with something that’s working on like lunar architecture and kind of getting people onto the moon, living sustainably on the moon to help people back here on earth,” said Bornhorst.

His graduation will be taking place on Sunday.