ARES Rocketry's competition entry at the International Rocket Engineering Competition in Texas, June 2025. Flying on an O5500 solid motor targeting 30,000 ft. I designed and built a large proportion of the fin can and airframe as Structures Lead.
As Structures Lead I was responsible for the fin can design and a large proportion of the airframe manufacturing. The O5500 is a serious motor — high thrust, high impulse, demanding flight environment — and the fin can had to be built to match.
[ Describe the fin can design in detail — geometry, material, attachment method, manufacturing process. What made it technically challenging? What were you trying to achieve with the build quality? ]
[ Describe the airframe sections you manufactured — materials, processes, tolerances, any fit-up challenges with other subteams' components. ]
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[ Describe the competition experience — what IREC involves, the scale of it, the inspection process. What was it like taking the rocket to Texas? What did the judges say about the build? ]
Launch day, IREC 2025 — Spaceport America, New Mexico
Lemaire banked hard off the rod shortly after launch and undershot the target altitude significantly, causing a parachute deployment failure. It wasn't the flight we had prepared for.
[ Describe what happened in more detail — what you think caused the rod departure, what the failure sequence looked like, what the post-flight analysis showed. What did you take from it? What would you do differently? ]
The 4th in category result reflects the technical quality of the build judged independently of flight performance. The structures work held up — the anomaly was elsewhere in the system.
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