Introduction

The Columbia Space Initiative Rockets Team’s yearlong hybrid rocket (2024-25) targeted an altitude of 6,500 ft with payload deployment at apogee. Historically, our hybrid rocket program has used nitrous oxide as the oxidizer for a paraffin wax fuel grain. Liquid oxygen offers higher thermochemical combustion efficiency, greater energy density when stored as a cryogenic liquid, and can operate in a single-phase state, validating our switch to LOX. We can achieve efficiencies closer to those of modern liquid rocket engines while preserving the safety and reliability inherent to hybrid rocket propulsion systems. 

We launched this rocket at the FAR-OUT competition held yearly in Mojave Desert, California in the beginning of June. Our project concluded at the end of the summer with analysis and discussion of future LOX fluid and combustion system designs using results from our launch.