Airframe
Structures and aerodynamics: simulation, analysis, CAD and machining. The airframe has to survive peak loading and come back straight.
Airframe designs and analyzes every structural part of the rocket: the body tube, fin can, nosecone, and the load paths between them. Work starts in CAD and OpenRocket, where the subteam models flight performance and aerodynamic behaviour before anything gets cut or laid up. Airframe works closely with Avionics, Payload, and Composites through the build, since its decisions set the envelope everyone else designs into: what fits inside the tube, how sections mate, and what the structure can survive under peak loading and landing.
First year
Help translate an OpenRocket or Onshape model into a part you can machine or lay up, and shadow fin sanding, body-tube rolling, or a structural load test. First projects are hands-on shop work tied to whatever the current airframe needs.
Useful, not required
OpenRocket, Onshape, and basic structural intuition. Ansys helps if you want to run FEA. CAD and machining experience are useful but not required; we teach the rest.
About 6 h / week
Every other subteam.
Each one takes members with no experience every term.
Avionics
Flight computers and telemetry: embedded firmware and PCB design in KiCad. This subteam decides when every event on the flight fires.
Composites
Carbon and fibreglass layup, tooling, and the finishing that makes it fly straight.
Operations
Graphic design, merch, and social media. What people see when they have never set foot in the shop.
Payload
The experiment we fly, and most years the reason the rocket exists at all. CAD, electrical and software all sit on it.
Propulsion
Motor integration, thrust curves, and Icarus: our in-house hybrid engine in development alongside the commercial motors we fly today.
Recovery
Dual-deployment parachutes and the sequencing that brings the vehicle back intact.
Who runs it.
Named leads, so you know who to ask.
We hire first years.
We hire people who have never touched a rocket. Come ready to learn. We'll teach the rest.
Find us at Facultyfest on August 31, 12:30 to 17:00, or Clubsfest on September 14, 16:30 to 19:30 on the JHE field. Applications close September 18. You don't need to be an engineer: we need people on operations as much as on airframe.