Tufts SEDS Rocketry Team

Hercules began as a silly passion project, and ended up being a vital test bed to qualify Tufts Rocketry's Student Researched and Developed (SRAD) flight computers, called Panini, for the 2026 IREC. I initially began designing Hercules in early April 2026. My goals were simple: I wanted to design a tall rocket requiring a 4" coupler, featuring 8x fins, and flying on a 3x motor cluster. I also wanted to challenge myself to incorporate on-board cameras and carry the team's SRAD computers to passively collect additional flight data. This required me to design a pseudo-avionics bay, designed to be permanently attached to the nosecone during flight.

On April 25th, the team drove up to St. Albans, VT to conduct Test Flight 2 for KINDLEVAN, our vehicle to compete at IREC 2026. Disaster struck during the launch due to a motor failure, damaging the vehicle and resulting in inconclusive SRAD Panini results. One of the goals of the test flight was to qualify Panini for active dual-deploy operations by having them trigger deployment of both drogue parachute and main parachute, allowing us to fly them active at the competition in June. Since this was unable to happen during the test flight, the only way to qualify these computers before competition was to fly them on another dual-deploy rocket in the remaining weeks in the academic year. The last launch of the school year was the following weekend, May 2nd, and there was no other dual-deploy rocket ready for the flight. Despite the odds, there was hope - since Hercules was designed to carry SRAD boards already, I hatched a plan to redesign the passion project as a true  dual-deploy vehicle, turning the avionics sled into a full fledged avionics bay with active deployment triggered by Panini. Transforming my first cluster rocket into my first dual deploy in a week was a risky, colossal task, so I enlisted the help of freshman Allie Staiger and the KINDLEVAN electrical lead, Lily Lai.

The full redesign and build of Hercules took place over 5 days, including con-ops reconfiguration, recovery calculations (including shear pin count, black powder weight, harness lengths, chute sizes), and avionics installation and wiring.

Due to time constraints, ejection testing to verify my recovery calculations (2x shear pins in the forward, 2x shear pins in the aft, 1.8g of black powder to separate main, 1.2g of black powder to separate drogue) were unable to happen until we arrived at the launch site. Thankfully I had added enough safety margin and the black powder quantities proved to be adequate to separate the airframe, quickly concluding our testing.

 We held our breath as the ignition button was pressed, and all three motors ignited as the rocket cleared the rail in an exciting roar. The RunCam recorded the entire flight, including stunning views at apogee and drogue deployment. From the footage and post-flight analysis, we believe Panini successfully triggered drogue deployment but was unable to trigger main deployment due to an error in the code, resulting in the RRC3 triggering the second deployment instead. Despite the issue with main, the successful deployment of drogue with Panini was a reason to celebrate as it marked the club's first successful SRAD computer deployment.