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Competing in the Spaceport America Cup has been a dream of Ram Rocketry, a student organization in the VCU College of Engineering, since they were founded only three years ago. This summer, they brought their dream to fruition.

A brief history

Since its inception in 2006 by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA), the Spaceport America Cup has been upheld as the largest intercollegiate rocket engineering competition to date. Over 150 teams from across the globe competed this summer with the number of teams growing exponentially every year. Student rocketry teams spend months, sometimes years, preparing to attend this prestigious event, gaining experience, refining their designs and raising funds. 

While a relatively new team, the highly motivated students of Ram Rocketry quickly gained momentum, participating in local competitions and achieving national certifications through the Tripoli Rocketry Association, a non-profit organization working to enhance the safety and education of high-powered rocketry. At the end of this year’s launch season, over twenty students earned their level one certification, over ten students their level two certification and two students their level three. Of over 8,300 members of Tripoli nationwide, only around 1,200 have achieved a level three certification.

With help from the electrical and computer engineering department chair and faculty mentor  Robert Klenke, Ph.D., students spent the past year meticulously designing and building a rocket, unsure if they would even make it to the final competition. 

Preparing the rocket

The primary goal of the competition was to launch a rocket, with a payload of 8.8 pounds, to a target altitude of 10,000 or 30,000 feet, depending on the category – Ram Rocketry competed in the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) 10,000 foot category. Along with this, there is a concurrent competition for scientifically relevant, student designed payloads. 

Before beginning the build process, the students created three teams to divide the workload and give ample attention to each aspect of the competition – the launch operations team, the recovery operations team and the payload operations team. The first two teams focused primarily on the design, build, launch and recovery systems of the rocket, utilizing Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software to visualize the rocket’s construction. 

“We had deadlines spread throughout the year for reports that our team leads and members wrote, explaining every decision we made, the hardware we used and the goals we wanted to achieve,” said CJ Kato, the current president of Ram Rocketry. “Since I was on the recovery team, I researched our avionics, parachutes, GPS and altimeters. From that, we had to build and test the rocket multiple times to make sure all the things we created were working as intended.”

Preliminary diagram for the rocket’s design.
Preliminary diagram for the rocket’s design.

The payload operations team was in a unique position, collaborating closely with the Brain Phantom Research team at VCU to integrate traumatic brain injury research with their payload design. 

Ram Rocketry and the Brain Phantom Research team at VCU saw the potential for further research, using the high acceleration from the rocket to simulate the brains of astronauts and fighter jet pilots during takeoff and landing. A brain phantom is a synthetic model of a human brain composed of hydrogel and used to mimic brain activity and brain tissue, simulating blood flow within the brain using colored water. These brain phantoms have been used to simulate the brain during concussions, micro-concussions and traumatic brain injuries occurring during events such as car accidents. 

Technical design of the payload.
Technical design of the payload.

Once complete, the final challenge was getting the rocket, affectionately named Banana Pudding because of its white and gold coloring, nearly 2,000 miles across the country to the competition in New Mexico. While the majority of the team flew, three students rented a pickup truck and drove the rocket three days across the country. 

Final payload setup with brain phantom inside.

In the desert

Day one in Las Cruces consisted of check-in and safety inspection, where the team assembled the rocket, examined their flight safety review and closed out the day with a group photo. The entirety of day two was spent in the conference center poster session, presenting the research and work that went into designing their rocket. 

Group photo with all participating teams.
Group photo with all participating teams. 

“The conference was a fantastic professional setting to interact and network with other students and professionals from across the world, including companies looking to recruit and sponsor students,” said launch ops lead, Madison Grove. “We got insight into the possibilities within the rocketry world, current research in the field and the career opportunities available to us.”

Ram Rocketry members showcasing their rocket and poster at the conference.
Ram Rocketry members showcasing their rocket and poster at the conference.

Days three and four brought the launches, where the teams drove an hour and a half into the desert to Spaceport America’s official launch area – commencing the penultimate moment for Ram Rocketry. Banana Pudding made its way into the air, falling just short of their 10,000 foot goal at an altitude of 8,700 feet. The flight record showed this was due to interference from the 20 mph winds at the time of launch. Despite this, the rocket’s parachute deployed with ease, leading the rocket to be recovered with no damage whatsoever, earning Ram Rocketry the highest score for recovery. 

Flight record of the launch.
Flight record of the launch.

“We learned so much from the competition this year,” said current vice president of Ram Rocketry, Megan Neighbors. “And we have a much better understanding of what to expect and how to prepare to come out even stronger at the 2025 Spaceport America Cup. We are currently developing a plan for next year, but we have already decided to retire Banana Pudding and build from scratch again.” 

The team celebrated their last day in New Mexico with a team dinner and some sightseeing, before packing up and making the long journey home.

Moving forward

With multiple team leaders graduating this past spring, Ram Rocketry will look a little different as they prepare for the next competition. Keely Cooley and Ishaan Thakur, the president and vice president, respectively, are both taking their rocketry experience to Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Colorado. Thomas Goldstein, the launch operations lead, landed a position at General Dynamics Electric Boat in Connecticut. Each of these students have credited their success in developing professional skills and finding jobs post-graduation to their time with Ram Rocketry. 

“We have appointed the new leadership and team lead roles for the year, we’re also reading back over both our team’s progress reports and other schools,” said Kato. “We’re planning to build our rocket with more features and systems designed to get us closer to the 10,000 foot mark, along with focusing more on the reports.”

Although it may seem like the Spaceport America Cup just ended, the team has kicked into gear gathering plans for their next rocket and fundraising for the competition in 2025. 

“Funding our club is essential for being able to pay for rocketry parts as well as send our students to Spaceport this coming year,” said Grove. 

The graduated students have passed the torch to the younger ones, ushering in a new era of Ram Rocketry full of excitement for another year of late night building sessions and competition preparations.


The VCU College of Engineering offers innovative undergraduate and graduate degree programs tailored to meet the demands of the rapidly evolving engineering field. As part of a premier research university, students are given the opportunity to perform real-world research in our state-of-the-art facilities as soon as they enroll. Browse videos and recent news to discover how the College of Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University prepares the next generation of scientists and engineers for the challenges of the future.

Categories Electrical & Computer Engineering, Student Stories, Undergraduate Student Stories
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