Learn Ventures · Aerospace Projects Consultant

Three-Stage
High-Powered Rocket

Mechanical redesign, composite fabrication, staging hardware, and flight-ready integration for a proof-of-concept rocket targeting the Kármán line.

SolidWorksComposite LayupMechanical DesignPrototypingFlight Hardware

Tall red and black high-powered rocket in workshop

Project Overview

Taking a large rocket from redesign to flight hardware.

At Learn Ventures, I worked on a high-powered three-stage rocket proof of concept built around commercially available solid rocket motors.

My work included mechanical redesign in SolidWorks, staging hardware, composite fabrication, and integration of flight-critical components. The approximately 20 ft vehicle used successively smaller 8 in, 6 in, and 4 in diameter stages.

Composite Manufacturing Development

When vacuum bagging failed, I changed the process.

The complex fin geometry made conventional vacuum consolidation difficult, so the manufacturing method was redesigned around the tooling and resources available.

Unsuccessful vacuum bagging attempt around carbon fiber fin tooling — **01 · Vacuum-bagging trial.** The initial vacuum-bagging attempt did not provide the required consolidation around the complex fin geometry.

Sand and bricks loading a flexible membrane over a composite layup fixture — **02 · Revised pressure process.** A flexible membrane, sand, and bricks replaced the vacuum system. The sand conformed to the geometry and distributed the applied load across the wet layup during cure.

Failure → redesign

Rather than continuing to fight sealing and consolidation around the fin geometry, I moved to a mechanically loaded process that could apply pressure without relying on vacuum.

Practical composite fabrication

The revised method used inexpensive materials to create distributed forming pressure while retaining the wet carbon-fiber layup, custom tooling, and cure process needed for the flight hardware.

Fin System

Fabrication, alignment, and integration

The fin assemblies combined composite structures with custom tooling and fixtures to hold geometry during fabrication.

Carbon fiber rocket fin assembly held in clear fabrication fixture — Fin/airframe assembly held in a custom fabrication fixture.

Composite fins

Pure carbon-fiber fins were fabricated using wet layup. Fin flutter was evaluated during the design process, and the flight hardware survived the mission and landing.

Hands-on integration

The project combined CAD and analysis with extensive fabrication, assembly, and iteration on full-scale hardware.

Staging + Avionics

Making three stages operate as one vehicle.

Reliable staging required mechanical interfaces, redundant initiation hardware, and flight-computer integration.

Ground test of rocket stage separation mechanism — **Ground separation test.** Testing the staging mechanism before flight demonstrated mechanical separation and provided a direct check of the integrated hardware.

Staging mechanism

I completed the external staging mechanism and designed a next-generation internal concept for later development.

Redundancy

Each stage incorporated eight black-powder charges with redundancy to improve staging reliability.

Flight computer

A TeleMetrum-based flight computer was adapted for the vehicle, with added redundancy and unnecessary features removed for the application.

Flight Result

15 km achieved.

The redesigned vehicle reached approximately 15 km altitude versus a 17 km OpenRocket/RockSim prediction, demonstrating the integrated mechanical, composite, staging, and avionics systems in flight.

Full high-powered rocket laid horizontally in workshop