Introduction

I was the project lead for the Michigan Aeronautical Science Association’s (MASA) fifth bipropellant liquid rocket engine. My responsibilities included designing, analyzing, and manufacturing a rocket nozzle intended to handle 12.5kN of thrust for a sustained 20 second main engine firing. This post outlines the process I went through and the skills I developed as well as the lessons learned along the way.

Building the ME-5 Rocket Engine Nozzle: From Design to Hotfire

When I first took on the role of project lead for the ME-5 rocket engine nozzle, I had little idea just how many disciplines I would have to bridge—materials, structures, manufacturing, and even a bit of psychology when things didn’t go as planned. The goal was deceptively simple: design and build a nozzle for MASA’s 12.5 kN RP-1/LOx engine that could survive the violent conditions of combustion while remaining light, efficient, and manufacturable. From the very first sketches, I was immersed in understanding how metals deform, how heat reshapes structure, and how even the smallest tolerance can make or break a rocket engine. Over twenty finite element analyses later, verified painstakingly with hand calculations, I began to trust my intuition about how steel behaves under thousands of pounds of pressure and heat.

Exploded view of final nozzle design.

The design process became a balance of creativity and realism. The final nozzle was a five-part assembly, anchored by a graphite throat insert and an ablative glass-phenolic extension—our team’s bold experiment to push the engine’s efficiency higher. Each design review forced me to make trade-offs between theoretical performance and the realities of manufacturing. I learned to think in terms of warping, stack-ups, and post-weld machining allowances rather than just perfect CAD models. Machining the 304 stainless steel components in-house taught me the rhythm of production: the patience of setting up a CNC waterjet, the noise of a manual lathe, and the satisfaction of seeing a drawing take physical form.

Weeks later, standing next to the finished engine on the test stand, the green composite extension gleaming under the blistering Mojave sun, I understood what engineering really meant. It wasn’t just about the math or the models—it was about iteration, teamwork, and learning to solve problems you couldn’t predict. The ME-5 nozzle project pushed me far beyond design theory and into the realm of real-world engineering, where precision and persistence matter just as much as innovation. It was a project that not only expanded my technical skill set but also taught me what it takes to bring an idea from concept to combustion.