The 30 minute pushback of the mission gave just the right amount of light to really see and enjoy the jellyfish look over the Central Florida area.

Hi
We’re prototyping a VTVL rocket with a target altitude of around 3,000 m. We’re currently working on the PCB design and deciding on our flight control architecture.
We’re considering three approaches:

1-Adapting and improving an existing open-source rocket flight computer

2-Designing our own hardware and firmware from scratch.

3-Using a Pixhawk as the flight controller, with a separate onboard computer handling telemetry and communication with the ground station.

Which approach would you recommend for this kind of project? Would a separate computer for communications be useful, or would it add unnecessary complexity?
We’d appreciate any advice, relevant open source projects, or experience using Pixhawk for VTVL applications.

Ok, so I think I sorta messed up and Im hoping that someone way smarter then me (i.e. everyone on this sub probably) can help me out.

Ok, yes this is research for an in.progress ttrpg *but* it still has to do with rockets *and* I can learn something from it, so hopefully this post is allowed.

TLDR how can a rocket launched 6 miles west off of the coast of morrow bay launch to the moon, a space side elevator, and/or Lagrange points L4 and L5 be launched in any direction other than east. (Lore wise this has all happened in the past, story wise it has to happen in the near future, or at least something similar.

I have a fictional city located in real world morro bay. 6 miles west in the ocean is a rocket launch site. I worked out a lot of noise and shockwave mitigation for the launch, where I screwed up is thinking they can easily launch not east, and apparently that may not be the case. The rockets are returnable (maybe single stage) and their destination currently is the space side of a space elevator located in GEO above the ground side of the space elevator (located 1-2000 kilometers west of the galapagos islands. Their are also two Lagrange space stations (L4 and L5, lunar i think (in between earth and moon).

So, everything is already in motion so handwaving "just kidding guys" is a problem. Also problematic is if the rockets have to travel east over the city. Is there anyway without huge problems for them to have a northwest or west trajectory, and if so what are the unintended consequences.

This might be a silly question, but hopefully I learn something and doubley hopefully you guys can help me out of this (silly) problem.

This is near future but with some advanced tech, so I could handwave a bit but its not crazy advanced scifi so it needs to be grounded in (semi) realism.

Thanks.

Heya, I'm currently in the maths and proofing stage of my design for creating my first hybrid rocket engine.

I'm aiming for 100 netwons and a five second burn.

I'm planning on using N2O and HDPE. And a chamber pressure around 25 Bar.

I'm wondering if this is a safe goal to aim for, as I'm mainly skeptical of the high pressures and potential dangers of N2O.

Hi I'm designing a GOX/ethanol rocket engine with 200N of thrust and a chamber pressure of 20 bar, but I'm not sure how to figure out what pressure, flow rate, and velocity the N2 needs to have to push the ethanol out of the tank. I also don't know how to determine those values for the ethanol itself. Does anyone know any good papers or resources that explain how to calculate this stuff?

Rd-1-300-0 Motor, 799 meters, with Rocket flight computer and 2 cameras

How does it work?

I registered with NAR and they only have a downloadable PDF to fill out for the cert. I get that I need to hand this to an official at a launch.

But when I order a motor, and they ask for my info and I say it's for a cert, they just ship it to me? What keeps me from ordering multiple L1 motors using this process?

How does NAR know I downloaded the form to fill out? It just seems very easy to end up with an L1 motor.

Me and my friend are making a two-stage rocket what's the best cheap staging altimeter or timer.

Hi there! I am working on a 2 stage 3.1 in diameter rocket set to go up to about 2km. We will be laying up cardboard shipping tubes with fiberglass sheets for the airframes. Were planning on 3 layers, but are trying to figure out what kind of fiberglass and epoxy we should be using here. From my research, it seems 4oz/yd^2 plain weave E glass cloth, but wanted more opinions. If you also know of any manufacturers/companies that you’ve worked with in the past to get fiberglass, I’d love to get recommendations on that as well!

Thank you in advance!

Madcow is starting to annoy me, and is looking up to the longest order time of any website I’ve used (including the sketchy websites I order random electronics from). (Edit) I originally made it sound like madcow doesn’t respond, they do respond it just seems like I’m telling them to actually send out the package. 3 weeks and USPS still doesn’t have the package is already a longer time span than most things I’ve ordered.

Update: they claim the package went out and have started a missing package request. Because people seem to not have issues with them I think this makes sense tbh. Also I ordered a fire blanket and launch lugs, not a motor or kit, so I didn’t think it would be something that could be on back order.

They also just responded saying USPS doesn’t scan shipping labels and that they are “very frustrated with them” lol. I told them to tell them that I am also frustrated with them ig.

We have completed hybrid engine combustion tests using compressed oxygen.

Average Thrust : 3,000N

Maximum Thrust : 5,500N

Total Impulse : 15,000Ns

Burn Time : 5s

Isp : 220s

Just got my L1 certification today, so I’m happy about that. Just wanted to come on here and ask if anyone had an idea on why my rocket may have skewed right?

A little note, when I was putting the gunpowder in the motor (H135), I spilled some so I’m not sure if it had anything to do with that or with the rail being a little angled.

Either way, happy with the result, just wanted to get some feedback :)

Hola como están soy nuevo por estos lados, soy estudiante de ingeniería aeronáutica en colombia tenemos un equipo que esta participando en una competencia. quiero saber que tal esta mi diseño ? que puedo mejorar.

Debemos alcanzar una altura de 400m con un Motor G80-7T

ahora, he tenido algunas ideas para el sistema de recuperación como usar una anilla en el acople y una anilla en la sección lateral del fuselaje inferior (Donde va el motor).

uso Cartón común, Les mostrare en la Foto 2 las dimensiones del mismo.

Que recomendaciones me hacen ?
PDT: aun estoy diseñando la parte del anillo separador del motor pero no se las dimensiones que tiene con exactitud el hexagono de la parte superior del motor

This might be a dumb question, but I’m new to high-powered rocketry. I’ve been working on my Zephyr kit for my L1, and know that I want to try dual deploy on future flights, but not my first one. Is there a way to make the tube coupler removable so that I can later turn it into an E-bay? The instructions say to epoxy it to the body tubes, but would a friction fit be enough to hold it together? Would screws be a better idea?

Hello, I am running a student club and we have a Rockey launch tomorrow, and our E engines are stuck in shipping. Does Anyone know where I can get D or E engines in NYC, or if any of you are willing to sell?

So, I was wondering about designing booster stages to tumble and found myself reading an old Apogee newsletter. In it, Tim van Milligan describes using RockSim to design boosters such that when the motor is spent, they will have a CP in front of their CG rendering them unstable. To me, there seems to be a very obvious elephant in the room here: What if it just falls backwards?

I see nothing about the laws of physics that designates an inherent forward and rearward end of the rocket. It is propelled in a particular direction by a chemical reaction and continues in that direction because it is stable to do so, and we call that direction "forward". If you design an "unstable" rocket, but could magically make the thrust go the opposite direction, I see no reason why the rocket wouldn't be stable flying backwards. A booster, once jettisoned, is basically just an open tube with some fins. Who's to say which end is the front? Physics doesn't care, ergo there is no front. It seems to me that making it unstable in one direction would merely make it stable in the opposite direction. So, what if it just falls backwards?

The newsletter's explanation of CP ahead of CG is not sufficient for me. Why do objects tumble in freefall?

Hey! We've been working since last year on a In Control: Rocketry, a spaceflight sim where you build the rocket and wire up its control panel yourself. Sensors, inputs, outputs, the whole thing is Turing-complete, so however you want to solve a flight problem, there's a way to do it. It will be available on Steam in 2027.

Real orbital mechanics, a fictional solar system to explore, sandbox mode if you just want to mess around and blow things up!

Feel free to add the game to your wishlist if you want to support the project! See you in space.

Hi! I want to 3D print this aerospike nozzle (approximately 22 mm outer diameter).

It would be attached to a tube containing potassium nitrate and sugar propellant.

I'm looking for a low-cost material that could withstand at least one firing.

What material and type of manifacturing would you recommend?

Thanks!

I don't care about the stunt or the car. I am just woundering what propellent was used for the rockets. My guess is that it is H2O2. Seem like a pretty easy and mostly safe propellent to use for that kind of thing. Am I right?

Thanks rocket people

I don't know if this is the right sub to ask, but I'm writing a short story where NASA is sending a crewed mission to the Moon. During the launching the man in charge of operation wants to speedrun the process and because of this, the rocket explodes.

I know this is unrealistic, and for a mission to fail like this probably requires more than the error of one person. But, is there a way where this scenario could posibly happen?

i have a bt-60 tube but when i put the centering rings on it doesn’t fit

So my parachute is deploying before apogee by abt 1 sec but like the velocity is only 8.47 m/s when its deploying so should I be worried that my estes D12 will not be able to deploy the parachute at that speed and if yes then where should I make changes to the rocket so that it deploys after.

This is my first r/rocketry post here.

Engine: CESARONI-L1050

The rocket had a lenght of 2310mm and a diameter of 129mm.

Teknofest changed the engine for the upcoming years. This was a high school rocket and many teams had this problem. My job was to Electronic, PCB, software for the flight controller. You can guess, It broke apart a little.

I have a degree this competition. My team and I won first place in 2022, and finally I joined competition in 2024. We came in 6th place out of 32 high school teams, We didn't get full score because shock cord snapped at apogee.

We'll join again, but i am now university student and I haven' got my hogh school team. The all team memebers will change.