The propulsion team is tasked with designing, fabricating, and testing the motor system to power the club’s rocket for competition. The team applies concepts learned in many engineering fields to rocket propulsion, such as thermodynamics, aerodynamics, mechanics, and programming to name just a few. In just a few short years, the propulsion team has been able to accomplish many feats, such as flying the first rocket on a motor made at Iowa State, developing a completely novel high performance solid propellant, and designing, manufacturing, and testing the most powerful rocket motor made at Iowa State. Working on the propulsion team is a fast paced environment with constant innovation and engineering determination. No matter your background, we are looking for dedicated members to help us test ever more powerful rocket motors.
Cyclone Rocketry prides itself on manufacturing almost every part of the rocket in-house, and the propulsion team is no different, fabricating almost every piece of our propulsion systems on campus by students.
While designing and manufacturing a motor to power the club’s rocket is our main objective, there are also many smaller project groups within the team working on researching other topics for future involvement. These projects include the development of new propellants, numerical algorithms to predict motor performance, and advanced data acquisition systems to log all test data effectively.