High Power Rocketry

High Power Rocketry (RCK)

The High Power Rocketry (RCK) portion of DOFPro provides open educational materials on the design, analysis, and construction of high-power rockets.

👉 Visit the full rocketry site here:
https://dofpro.org/RCK/

Origins of the Material

The High Power Rocketry materials were originally developed for the Harvey Mudd College course
E178, High Power Rocketry.

That course grew out of the rocketry version of
E80, Experimental Engineering, which ran from Spring 2008 through Spring 2016. Beginning in Spring 2017 the E80 course was converted to a project based on underwater autonomous vehicles. The current E80 site is available here.

DOFPro Version

For DOFPro, the material is being converted from a course website into a self-contained tutorial on High Power Rocketry as defined by:

• NFPA 1127 — Code for High Power Rocketry
• Tripoli Rocketry Association (TRA)
• National Association of Rocketry (NAR)

The original course relied heavily on proprietary tools. As part of the DOFPro project, these materials are being converted to open-source tools wherever possible.

Examples include:

• MATLAB → Python (NumPy, SciPy)
• Mathematica → SageMath
• Microsoft Excel → LibreOffice
• RockSim → OpenRocket
• SolidWorks → FreeCAD

We have not yet identified a suitable open-source replacement for LabVIEW.

In addition to converting the computational tools, we are also:

• replacing copyrighted references with Creative Commons or open-source materials
• recording instructional videos
• converting the existing rocket construction web pages into DOFPro format

The videos have already been filmed but have not yet been fully edited.