ARGO + REDWINE
STRUCTURES, MANUFACTURING, PROTOTYPING
2025-2026
INTRODUCTION
Redwine is my subscale rocket prototype project built to validate the full-scale ARGO rocket design before committing to a full build. The core challenge was the separation and recovery system: engineering how the rocket splits apart at apogee and gets recovered intact.
DESIGNING METHOD
The electronics bay sits between the two airframe sections and fires e-matches to ignite black powder charges and pop the nosecone off. Getting the geometry right so it sealed, mounted correctly, and still fit all the avionics took a lot of back-and-forth. The recovery system has two completely separate deployment events: drogue at apogee to slow the descent and main at 1000ft for a soft landing. Each one has to work, or the rocket doesn't come back in one piece. I modeled the full flight in OpenRocket to catch anything the math missed and verify parameters such as CP, CG, apogee height, and ejection timing.
FINAL PERFORMANCE
After a lot of failed attempts and late nights, we finally got the nose cone to pop off cleanly, with the issue being friction from how tightly the shock cord and chute were packed into the small airframe. Once the subscale worked, I went to the full-scale test op where we successfully popped the nose cone off, but found a design flaw in the drogue chute packaging.
