Complete redesign of engine

May, 2002 - Cambridge, MA

 The MIT Rocket Team has decided to overhaul the entire design of its engine. It become obvious during in-lab testing of the v3 engine during the spring that there were a number of engine components that were relics of the original engine design, and which were large obstacles to progress on engine testing. Rather than spend excessive time and energy on overcoming those limitations, the team decided to take advantage of the knowledge it had gained from testing multiple engine designs to start from scratch and make the overall engine design better. As part of the redesign, the baseline thrust of the engine is being doubled in order to better accomodate the "virtual presence" camera flight package.

 Work is progressing on the design of our full-surround video flight package, as well as the high-power model rocket which will be used to flight test the video package. There will be two UROP students working on the high-power rocket system over the summer.

Team member wins Lemelson-MIT Student prize