Composites
Carbon and fibreglass layup, tooling, and the finishing that makes it fly straight.
Composites turns CAD into flight-ready parts: nose cones, body tubes, carbon fins, and the jigs that hold them straight during layup. Most exposed airframe surfaces are fibreglass or carbon fibre rolled and cured in-house rather than bought off the shelf. The subteam works from Airframe's models, advises on what will lay up cleanly, and owns final assembly once the parts are out of the mould.
First year
Help roll a body tube, trim a fin in the mould, or prep a layup under a lead's supervision. First projects are hands-on shop work, not theory.
Useful, not required
Patience with epoxy and PPE, attention to finish quality, and basic CAD literacy so you can read the parts you're making. Prior composites experience is rare on the team; we teach the process.
About 6 h / week
Every other subteam.
Each one takes members with no experience every term.
Airframe
Structures and aerodynamics: simulation, analysis, CAD and machining. The airframe has to survive peak loading and come back straight.
Avionics
Flight computers and telemetry: embedded firmware and PCB design in KiCad. This subteam decides when every event on the flight fires.
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.