Progress Towards Hotfire of a Student-Built Liquid Bipropellant Rocket Engine

Tartarus, founded in 2017, is a student liquid rocketry team formed as a project under the Space Hardware Club (SHC) at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). At the beginning of its lifecycle, the project’s goal was to develop a liquid-fueled rocket capable of reaching 30,000 feet at Spaceport America Cup. Then in Spring of 2023, the team held a hotfire TRR for the engine developed for said rocket. The feedback provided at the review revealed many shortcomings and issues with the engine which ultimately led to a total rescope of the project going into Fall of 2023. Since then, the current mission of Tartarus is to develop design tools and a reliable testbed for long-term engine development and testing. This shall be achieved with the team’s workhorse engine “Prometheus.” The engine is rated to 280 pounds of thrust utilizing an ethanol and liquid oxygen propellant mixture. The engine will be tested on the team’s custom mobile test stand (MTS) which underwent a critical design review (CDR) on January 17th, 2025. The test stand has been designed to be installed on a trailer for easy setup and breakdown to facilitate quick engine testing. As of now, the team has begun assembly on the stand and the engine. The team has also been developing a new in-house Arduino-based control system which shall undergo a critical design review of its own in early February. In order to facilitate this level of development, the project’s management has managed to make connections with industry and other student liquid rocketry teams while also utilizing new tools such as a work breakdown structure (WBS) and a product breakdown structure (PBS) to keep the team on track. In this paper, the authors shall detail the current progress the team has made towards their hotfire. Topics included are the engine, the test stand, the control system, safety tools, and management tools. As of now, the team is well on its way to achieving the hotfire date of May 9, 2025.