IREC
Every year HPRC participates in the International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) hosted by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA). The competition takes place in Midland, Texas and comprises teams from all over the world. In the past we have participated in the 10k COTS category, meaning we intend to reach 10,000 feet above the ground and our motor was bought off the shelf. Starting in 2026 we are participating in the 30k COTS category where we intend to reach 30,000 feet.
St. Albans Launch Site
As one might guess, you can't launch rockets just anywhere. We need to travel to an approved launch site in order to test our rocket. Obviously, Texas is a bit out of the way to do testing so we launch at St. Albans, VT. This launch site is frequented by many New England teams and is a very helpful environment. It is usually very cold though so be sure to pack warm if you go to a test launch!
CAD Resources
HPRC uses OnShape for all of our CAD needs. If you need access to HPRC's shared domain, reach out to your sub team or division lead. The team used to use SolidWorks for CAD and so some of our learning resources still use that software. The softwares are easy to jump between though so do whatever makes the most sense to you!
If you want to learn on your own, be sure to check out our workshops. You can always find more help in the SharePoint under Workshops and Member Resources.
Club Nomenclature and Organization
Making a rocket requires many discrete teams, so we divide the team into 3 divisions and many sub teams. The org chart can be found here. However, the team also uses many acronyms; so, we created a document of commonly used acronyms. This document includes those used by the team or WPI, acronyms used by ESRA, and common acronyms used in engineering and it can be found here.
