Thread by @A_J_Higgins

Today, at the Spring Technical Meeting of the Canadian Section of Combustion Institute, @cbkiyanda and I will be hosting a special session featuring the student-team-led propulsion activity across Canada, centered around the @Spaceport_Cup competition.

Opening keynote by Adam Trumpour of @Launch_Canada: There are now 22 university-based student rocket teams across Canada, half of which are now active in development of their own hybrid or liquid bipropellant engines, representing the effort of thousands of students.

Adam points out that rocket team activity is now the main student-led engineering activity at many Canadian universities. Adam will be hosting a Canadian-based launch event this August in Cochrane, Ontario, #LaunchCanada. launchcanada.org

Oleg Khalimonov and Alex Robitaille of @SpaceConcordia unveil their 35 kN LOX/kerosene engine, the highest thrust student-built rocket engine in the world.

William Nelson of @UCalgary reports on hybrid engine development. The Calgary student team has a strong collaboration with the research lab of Prof. Craig Johansen.

Sloan Sobie of the @ubcrocket team is exploring a regeneratively cooled liquid bipropellant engine.

Bachar Elzein and my former student William Georges of @Reactiondyn, one of the leading Canadian space launch start-ups. Reaction Dynamics evolved out of a student rocket team at @polymtl. They have been keeping their engine under wraps, but maybe we’ll get some details today.

Bachar announced that their first suborbital launch will occur from the coast of Scotland. William showed video of hot fires of Reaction Dynamics’ RE-201 hybrid engine. This is very clean exhaust for a hybrid engine!

Orion Moore from @TorontoMet exploring nitrous-ethanol as a propellant combination for a student-designed bipropellant engine.

Gabriel Couroux from @polymtl speaking on development of a 5 kN hybrid rocket.

Members of the @SpaceConcordia team giving more details of their 35 kN rocket engine testing capabilities, the largest student-developed rocket engine in the world.

Note @SpaceConcordia hydrostatic testing of their 35 kN engine being done with a hand pump in a student’s apartment bathtub!

I can’t imagine a more motivated audience than these student rocket teams, but Mohammad Ghali of the @mcgillu Rocket Team making sure everyone remembers why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Cyril Mani presents a “lessons learned” talk derived from the McGill Rocket Team’s multi-year effort in setting up a rocket test site in the West Island of Montreal (@McGillMacCampus). This is a preview of a more comprehensive talk Cyril will give at #IAC2022 in Paris this fall.

While not work done by a student team, there is clearly some cross pollination going on with team activity and academic research at @polymtl in the lab of Prof. Etienne Robert, examining hypergolic ignition of hybrid rocket fuels.

.@SpaceConcordia is clearly one of the leading Canadian student rocket team efforts with their Starsailor rocket.

And that’s a wrap! Thanks to everyone who participated in our special session on student-led rocket engine development across Canada.

Limited funding can be a great stimulus for creativity, and student teams push this maxim to the limit. Operating with budgets orders of magnitude less than even the meanest and leanest start-ups, students are able to leverage… (1/2)

…donated equipment, surplus matériel, borrowed facilities, and a boundless supply of enthusiasm to accomplish engineering development cycles that would traditionally have been the domain of governments. Watch this space. (2/2)