MIT Rocket Team

MIT Rocket Team

The MIT Rocket Team is a group of 60 undergraduate students dedicated to pushing the boundaries of collegiate rocketry. The team’s ultimate goal is to breach the border between Earth and space while, more importantly, exposing members to the deeper engineering processes behind their interests. Each year, the team’s members learn and accomplish an astonishing amount on both an individual and team-wide level.  

Within the group, our members are a part of one of five subteams: Structures, Avionics, Solid Propulsion, Liquid Propulsion, or Aerodynamics. Almost every one of these subteams contributes to our main rocket, the next of which is projected to reach the distance to space. That is, however, with the exception of our Liquid Propulsion subteam.  

Why We Need Your Help

The team has never fired a liquid rocket engine with anything but water in the place of real propellant. The various costs of component procurement, testing, and the rest of the development process are an intimidating challenge to overcome. Consequently, members of our team are missing out on key opportunities for exposure to the full engineering design process and industry standards behind effective, reliable liquid propulsion systems. 

Our team currently has two liquid engines in development, and needs your help to turn a concept into reality! 

Testing one of our liquid engines with water (a “cold flow” test)

Where We’re Going 

In its journey to provide the ideal engineering experience to undergraduates, especially first-years with no prior exposure, the MIT Rocket Team joined the Spaceport America Cup. As the world’s largest intercollegiate rocket engineering conference and competition, it offers a phenomenal foundation for the team’s newer members to take center stage in designing and manufacturing a competitive rocket. Coupled with this, it is also the first chance we’ve had to deploy a liquid propulsion system in a competition rocket: the perfect testing ground for the Liquid Propulsion subteam’s first flight-worthy system. 

3D printing our “Romulus” liquid propulsion engine

Just this semester, our Liquid Propulsion subteam secured its first-ever testing site in Brunswick, Maine. This is monumental, as the only challenge remaining is to finalize a system to test. In accomplishing this first test, the Rocket Team’s opportunity horizon will expand past any restriction to solid propulsion. The introduction of a new propulsion system into fully-fledged rocketry will yield greater freedom for students in every department to more easily and thoroughly gain exposure to rocketry in a manner impossible through coursework alone.  

It is with your support that students of all backgrounds and interests will find access to these opportunities!