Half Cat Rocketry

Half Cat Rocketry began in the fall of 2020 as the joint project of two aerospace students at the University of Central Florida. It took just four months to progress from an idea on paper to a fully functional liquid bipropellant motor - an amazingly short timeline for a student team, especially a self-funded one with only two members. Today, Half Cat Rocketry stands as an organization dedicated to growing the publicly available body of knowledge on building liquid bipropellant rockets.

Half Cat is the name of a meme – it has no deeper meaning. We chose to brand ourselves with this name because it stands out. Likewise, there is no grander purpose to our endeavor:  We are passionate about rocketry, and especially liquid bipropellants as the “final frontier” of amateur rocketry. It is our hope that rocketeers everywhere will be able to learn, understand, and succeed in creating their own through the groundwork we lay.

Liquid rockets are often given the descriptors expensive, years of work, incredibly difficult - our goal is to change that mindset. While it is true that all amateur rockets require time, money, and skill, bipropellant motors do not require a huge leap in ability. As we continue our work, we strive to demonstrate that amateur liquids can be accomplished by anyone who applies a little bit of creativity to existing knowledge of solid and hybrid motors in high power rocketry.

The hardware we produce may look rudimentary, but it is effective. As university students operating independently, it was necessary that we find the simplest solution without sacrificing safety – and that is a requirement for liquid rockets to be a regular part of high power rocketry. Furthermore, we care less about performance and more about making Mach diamonds:  Efficiency is great, but we like to launch rockets!

We make it possible for anyone to build and launch liquid rockets.