Following the successful launch of CP3 and CP4, the PolySat team noticed an unreliable uplink to both satellites. A significant problem with the PolySat COMM system is poor receive sensitivity of the communications system. Efforts have been made to improve the uplink margin, but without proper characterization of the receiver sensitivity, the problem cannot be fully addressed. By developing an accurate method of measuring receive sensitivity, a methodical approach can be used to properly diagnose the communication system and link budget. Two revisions of the PolySat COMM system will be measured and compared. An in-depth study of the PolySat COMM system will be performed, providing an interesting look at possible causes of the inconsistent uplink and methods of improving the COMM system. For future bus development, this test setup can be used to accurately measure the receive sensitivity.

Swanton Pacific Ranch is an educational and research facility owned by the Cal Poly Corporation and managed by the Cal Poly State University (Cal Poly) College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences. Located about 180 miles north of campus and just 14 miles north of Santa Cruz, California on Highway 1, the property was first leased to and then donated to Cal Poly by the late Albert E. Smith in 1993. The rancho’s original inhabitants included Native Americans, Spaniards, Mexicans, as well as various European immigrants and their descendants; currently, the staff, faculty, and students of Cal Poly occupy the land. Each of these groups used the land’s rich environment for a variety of purposes from subsistence to financial and intellectual pursuits. Over time, researchers and local historians have discussed specific aspects of the Swanton Pacific Ranch and its environs, particularly concerning its occupants, land use (e.g. businesses, farming, research), and land features (e.g. geology, botany). The following work offers a more cohesive, descriptive narrative of the land and its people organized chronologically from prehistory to the present.

The recent growing popularity of mobile devices has led to the establishment of several popular mobile platforms such as the Android operating system. To foster growth in this evolving market, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) were created to enable developers to create mobile device applications that utilize mobile device features and functionality for personal or widespread commercial use. However, as a result of excessive device and API evolution, mobile development faces increasingly complex issues, including an alarmingly rapid decay of development resources. This thesis conducts a case study around one such resource: a series of Android app development lab exercises used in an Android app development course taught at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. First, these labs and their respective written guides were modernized and fitted for backwards-compatibility to better reflect newer Android devices and development tools at the time. The updated labs were subsequently used in the next course offering, with student lab feedback recorded for evaluation. Several years later, the apps from these new labs were further tested for abnormal behavior on a variety of Android devices. Results from analyzing all feedback and observations show that despite all measures taken to future-proof these labs, Android device and API evolution continues to vastly outpace third-party Android resources without frequent modernization and upgrades.

Wind resource assessment at California Polytechnic State University shows there is potential for wind power generation on Cal Poly land. A computational fluid dynamics model based on wind data collected from a campus maintained meteorological tower on Escuela Ranch approximately 5 miles northwest of campus suggests there are areas of Cal Poly land with an IEC Class III wind resource at a height of 80 meters above ground. In addition during the daytime when the campus uses the most energy there are large portions of land with annual average daytime wind speeds above 6.9m/s. These areas have been identified by analyzing the wind speed and directional data collected at the meteorological tower and using it to create the boundary conditions and turbulence parameters for the computer model. The model boundary conditions and turbulence parameters have been verified through comparison between data collected at Askervein hill in Scotland during the 1980’s and the results of a simulation of Askervein hill using the same model. Before constructing a wind farm for power generation, additional meteorological towers should be constructed in Poly Canyon to further confirm the wind resource prediction.

Currently, the CubeSat spacecraft is predominantly used for missions at Low- Earth Orbit (LEO). There are various limitations to expanding past that range, one of the major ones being the lack of sufficient radiation shielding on the Poly-Picosatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD). The P-POD attaches to a launch vehicle transporting a primary spacecraft and takes the CubeSats out into their orbit. As the demand for interplanetary exploration grows, there is an equal increase in interest in sending CubeSats further out past their current regime. In a collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), students from the Cal Poly CubeSat program worked on a preliminary design of an interplanetary CubeSat deployer, the Poly-Picosatellite Deep Space Deployer (PDSD). Radiation concerns were mitigated in a very basic manner, by simply increasing the thickness of the deployer wall panels. While this provided a preliminary idea for improved radiation shielding, full analysis was not conducted to determine what changes to the current P-POD are necessary to make it sufficiently radiation hardened for interplanetary travel. This thesis develops a tool that can be used to further analyze the radiation environment concerns that come up with interplanetary travel. This tool is the connection between any geometry modeled in CAD software and the radiation tool OLTARIS (On- Page iv Line Tool for the Assessment of Radiation In Space). It reads in the CAD file and converts it into MATLAB, at which point it can then perform ray-tracing analysis to get a thickness distribution at any user-defined target points. This thickness distribution file is uploaded to OLTARIS for radiation analysis of the user geometry. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the tool, the radiation environment that a CubeSat sees inside of the current P-POD is characterized to create a radiation map that CubeSat developers can use to better design their satellites. Cases were run to determine the radiation in a low altitude orbit compared to a high altitude orbit, as well as a Europa mission. For the LEO trajectory, doses were seen at levels of 102 mGy, while the GEO trajectory showed results at one order of magnitude lower. Electronics inside the P-POD can survive these doses with the current design, confirming that Earth orbits are safe for CubeSats. The Europa- Jovian Tour mission showed results on a higher scale of 107 mGy, which is too high for electronics in the P-POD. Additional cases at double the original thickness and 100 times the original thickness resulted in dose levels at orders of about 107 and 104 mGy respectively. This gives a scale to work off for a “worst case” scenario and provides a path forward to modifying the shielding on deployers for interplanetary missions. Further analysis is required since increasing the existing P-POD thickness by 100 times is unfeasible from both size and mass perspectives. Ultimately, the end result is that the current P-POD standard does not work too far outside of Earth orbits. Radiation-based changes in the design, materials, and overall shielding of the P- POD need to be made before CubeSats can feasibly perform interplanetary missions.

Over the last decade, miniature ion thruster development has remained an active area of research do to its low power, low thrust, and high efficiency, however, due to several technical issues; a flight level miniature ion thruster has proved elusive. This thesis covers the design, fabrication, assembly, and test of an altered version of the Miniature Xenon Ion thruster (MiXI), originally developed by lead engineer Dr. Richard Wirz, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In collaboration with Dr. Wirz, MiXI-CP-V3 was developed at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with the goal of implementing of a ¼ inch hollow cathode and 3mmx3mm plasma confinement magnets in order to improve the plasma confinement characteristics, reliability, and performance of the MiXI design. Operational testing revealed a mass utilization efficiency of 35-75% and a discharge loss of 550-1200 eV/ion over plasma discharge currents of 0.5-1.5A and propellant flow rates of 0.8-1.3 SCCM. Testing revealed that the MiXI thruster can be operated with a hollow cathode and observations and data gained from this study have led to a greater understanding of the operational parameters of the MiXI thruster, and will contribute to the development and advancement of the MiXI baseline design, with the goal of creating an efficient and reliable flight level miniature ion thruster.

This thesis develops a calibrated model of the Cal Poly Central Chilled Water Plant with Thermal Energy Storage for use in determining an optimal operating control strategy. The model was developed using a transient systems simulation program (TRNSYS) that includes plant performance and manufacturer data for the primary system components, which are comprised of pumps, chillers, cooling towers, and a thermal energy storage tank. The model is calibrated to the actual measured performance of the plant using the current control strategy as a baseline. By observing and quantifying areas for potential improvement in plant performance under conditions of high campus cooling load demands, alternative control strategies for the plant are proposed. Operation of the plant under each of these control strategies is simulated in the model and evaluated for overall energy and demand-usage cost savings. These results are used to recommend improvements in the plant’s current control strategy, as well as to propose an optimal control strategy that may be applied to reduce plant operating costs. The results of the model identify that the plant can perform more economically by employing more chiller power to charge the Thermal Energy Storage tank to higher capacities during overnight periods when the utility rates are lower. Staging the operation of the different chillers to more precisely follow the tank charges during these off-peak periods can ensure faster tank charging when its capacity may not be sufficient to meet the peak and part-peak cooling load demands. A proposed control strategy to accomplish this breaks the overnight Off-Peak rate period into three periods with separate control setpoints, which are designed to maintain the tank charge capacity at the minimum levels to be able to accommodate the daily campus cooling demands during peak and part-peak hours.

The Department of Energy (DOE) confirmed Team Solar Cal Poly from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, as a competitor in the 2015 Solar Decathlon in February 2014. The Solar Decathlon is a biennial collegiate competition to construct a net-zero home and operate it for a week of “normal use”. Solar Cal Poly needed assistance with passive and active HVAC systems for the design, and thermal load models. The competition will take place in Irvine, CA [33.67⁰, 117.82⁰ W] from September 27 – October 3, 2015. After the completion, a potential final location for the house will be Santa Ynez, CA [34.61⁰ N, 120.09⁰ W]. Ms. Willis assisted with a climate study for both locations and research passive and active HVAC systems and design elements for Team Solar Cal Poly. She modeled the final summer design in DesignBuilder to calculate the heating and cooling loads. The heating load was calculated to be 26.7 kBTU/h. The cooling load was calculated to be 2-tons. A mini-split HVAC system was selected for the final summer design based off the calculated heating and cooling loads. For this design, the Fujitsu Hybrid Halcyon Flex met the minimum requirements, and was a multi-zone system that could condition all three major spaces of the design. This report provides a summary of information and the basic design process for future Solar Decathlon designs considerations.

The purpose of this study was to examine the structure of the event process on Cal Poly’s campus. An intrinsic case study method was used, and data were collected and analyzed using triangulation from three sources of information: documents, interviews, and participation research. Overall, the structure of the event management process on campus was found to be stable, but could use improvement. Cal Poly should consider establishing a specific, designated organization that would help centralize the event management process at Cal Poly. This organization could be in charge of training and updating event managers, approving events, monitoring volume of events on campus at a specific time, holding event managers accountable to following policies, and maintaining a website that would act as a hub for all event-related materials.

Civil rights have long been an important focus of historical scholarship. As the United States continues to grapple with issues of racism and the complicated legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, it is imperative that a variety of perspectives are incorporated into scholarship on the subject. Traditional scholarship on the subject has focused on the large organizations, individuals, marches, and activities that have come to characterize the Civil Rights movement. This study seeks to integrate the perspectives of a case study population, African Americans in San Luis Obispo, California, to assess the ways in which African Americans away from large population centers were able to participate in the Civil Rights movement. This study draws primarily on contemporary newspapers, NAACP records, and government documents to assess the relationship between the local civil rights movement and its national counterpart. Civil rights activities at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo also reveal important instances of discrimination and exclusion on campus. Research has shown that, despite relative isolation and a miniscule population, African Americans in San Luis Obispo experienced similar discrimination, isolation, and economic exclusion as their urban and rural counterparts throughout the nation. They also attempted to bring attention to their plight using nationally established organizations and tactics. Though African Americans in San Luis Obispo met with limited success, their previously undocumented struggle has revealed a population determined to fight for their rights. The continuity between the experiences of African Americans throughout the country renders a more complete understanding of racism in the United States.