Independent Project - Not College-Affiliated
Project Deoxys
Project Summary
Liquid rocket engine employing nitrous oxide and E85 as propellants, and inspired by the Mojave Sphinx engine from Half Cat Rocketry. Made independently by a team of six people as a way of learning about liquid rocket engines, as well as personally to introduce some friends who never did rocketry before to this hobby.
Mission
Build a liquid bipropellant rocket engine, which would ideally fly, but even in its static stage of development will serve as an educational tool and help new team members understand the basics of liquid propulsion, as well as allow designing and testing our own injector at some point down the road.
Requirements
- > Base design: Half Cat Rocketry's Mojave Sphinx (open source)
- > Propellants: N₂O (oxidizer) / E85 (fuel)
- > Team of 6: Lead Engineer, Project Manager, Propulsion, Structures/Manufacturing, Test/GSE, Avionics/Recovery
Results
Verified PerformancePhase 1 - Manufacturing (Complete)
11 parts out of 11 machined in-house, thus completing the manufacturing stage.
Phase 2 - Assembly & Test Stand (In Progress)
Working on manufacturing review and assembling the whole engine as well as developing our own vertical stand for hydrostatic and static testing of the engine.
Lessons Learned
"Choosing an existing open source design (Mojave Sphinx) rather than making one ourselves helped us in making a realistic start into liquid propulsion."