Race 2 Space

We’re proud to announce that Open Turbopumps has been selected to compete in Race-To-Space 2026 (R2S-26) following the successful completion of our Preliminary Design Review for our next-generation turbopump: OT-2 - Man-Ray and The Dirty Bubble. Open Turbopumps is an open-source rocket propulsion group dedicated to pushing turbomachinery forward while lowering the barrier to entry for students. Our mission is: - Create the foundation and learning resources for rocket turbomachinery to become more accessible by students and amateur rocketry enthusiasts alike. As part of that mission, we donated our last year's competition turbopump “Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy” to the University of Sheffield, where it now serves as a hands-on learning resource, which will be on-display at this February's R2S workshop, helping inspire the next generation of propulsion engineers. Since the last competition, we have expanded to a 6-member multidisciplinary team, covering systems, fluids, combustion, mechanical design, and testing: Elias Aoubala — Systems Lead, Turbine & Stator Responsible Craig Orrock — Pump & Expeller Responsible Dominic Callister — Gas Generator Responsible Gabriel Brown — Mechanical Design & Assembly Responsible Sam Beaumont — Mechanical Design & Assembly Responsible Fintan Cluskey — Test Architecture Responsible In addition, Mario Hernández Méndez has supported the team as a technical expert, overviewing our design reviews and providing technical feedback on the project. OT-2 is a high-pressure, gas-generator-driven turbopump designed to pressurise isopropyl alcohol for a high-thrust engine. It builds directly on lessons learned from our previous campaign at Airborne Engineering Ltd, with analytical models now grounded in real experimental data. Key improvements include: - Designed for 2.5 kg/s IPA flow at 40 bar head - Improved Barske impeller and axial supersonic turbine design - Custom expeller-based dynamic shaft seal (replacing the previous COTS cartridge seal) - 3D-printed injector assembly with a single-element ox-centred pentad Nitrous Oxide / IPA gas-generator architecture As a result, the turbopump is roughly half the size of our previous design, with improved performance, efficiency, and manufacturability — a major milestone for the team and the open-source propulsion community. Links to our open-sourced tools and documentation can be found in the post comments. As an independent, open-source team we are currently entirely self-funded. However, for the manufacturing of OT-2, we’re actively seeking: - Industry sponsors to support procurement of key-components - In-kind manufacturing or testing to further improve our designs. If you’re passionate about space access, education, or open-source hardware, we’d love to collaborate. Finally, a huge thank you to Race 2 Space for their continued support — enabling us to validate our models and return high-quality tools back to the propulsion community.

We are proud to share the successful completion of the first Race 2 Space Oman workshop, held in collaboration with Sultan Qaboos University, with the support of our partners Race 2 Space , Oman’s National Space Program, and Etlaq Spaceport 🚀🇴🇲. The workshop saw strong participation from government and private-sector professionals, space enthusiasts, and students. It served as an introductory platform to spark interest among young aspiring engineers who are keen to join the space sector in Oman and contribute to the shared ambition of building and launching space rockets from the Middle East, by the Middle East. Special thanks to Dr. Saoud Al Shoaili. for his continuous support, inspiration to young engineers, and sharing valuable insights into Oman’s national vision for space, as well as Prof. Amer Al-Hinai Deputy Vice Chancellor for Postgraduate Studies and Research at SQU, for his support and engagement. Read more about the R2S Oman: https://lnkd.in/dg8Ea42D Stay tuned for more updates as Race 2 Space Oman continues to grow. #art #r2s #space #oman #education #squ #uk #etlaq #rocket

We had the pleasure of organizing the 1st SQU & Race2Space Rocketry Workshop on December 4th, at Sultan Qaboos University. This successful event, in collaboration with the University of Sheffield's Race 2 Space initiative and Advanced Rocket Technologies, marks a premier step in kickstarting space and rocketry activities at SQU. The workshop was widely attended by professionals from the government and private sector, space enthusiasts, and students. We were honored by the presence of Prof. Amer Al-Hinai, Deputy Vice Chancellor for Post Graduates Studies and Research at SQU and Dr. Saoud Al Shoaili., Head of National Space Program. We are deeply thankful for the continued support of the Ministry of Transport, Communications, and Information Technology (MTCIT) for initiating space engineering activities at SQU by co sponsoring the Space Engineering Lab. Stay tuned for more exciting SQU space technology initiatives! #Rocketry #SpaceTech #SQU #MTCIT #Race2Space #Oman

Last week, our team alongside Alistair John had a productive meeting with the Global College of Engineering and Technology (GCET) in Muscat to explore opportunities for collaboration in aerospace education and student engagement. ✨ The discussion focused on developing impactful student activities, rocketry clubs, and technical pathways under our newly launched initiative, Race 2 Space Oman, delivered in partnership with Race 2 Space. 🚀 This marks a new step in expanding accessible space education across Oman and the region to empower the next generation of engineers with hands-on experience in rocketry and propulsion systems. Read more about our collaboration: https://lnkd.in/dRffhcRa #art #r2s #oman #gcet #education #rockets #space #mena

Celebrating two years of PicoGK ("peacock"), our advanced open source geometry kernel. When we released PicoGK in 2023, we knew at LEAP 71 that we would be able to build complex objects for industrial 3D printing, some of which you saw at Formnext over the years, including again this year. But that we would test fire our own cryogenic rocket engines — not one, but, on average one every four weeks in the past 18 months — that would have been a stretch of the imagination. In the past six weeks alone, we tested 5 entirely different engines. Last week we put our largest engines so far to the test. Burning 8 kg of cryogenic MethaLOX per second, delivering 2 tons of thrust (20kN). Built entirely on PicoGK, without a single stroke of CAD. Both engines, as different as they look, were created by the same Noyron computational model. Running the model takes a few minutes, and designs a new engine from nothing but a spec, outputting manufacturable files. By eliminating manual CAD, we are able to operate at a pace a human draftsperson simply cannot match. Building Large Computational Engineering Models is a complex process, mostly because it forces you to translate tribal engineering knowledge into a coherent and consistent system. But once you get started, you experience the compounding effect of software — you never do things twice, and every improvement you make benefits each subsequent design. Once you get started on this paradigm, you will never go back to the 3D sketchpad that is CAD. Here's the link to our MethaLOX campaign post: https://lnkd.in/dXbuqxdn To learn about PicoGK check out PicoGK.org, which also includes a pointer to my ongoing (and often delayed...) open access book project, Coding for Engineers. And of course it takes more than the two people of LEAP 71 (Josefine Lissner and me) to bring these engines to the test stand: We are glad for the support from Aconity3D GmbH for the fabulous prints, the UK Race 2 Space team for post machining and practical support at the test site, and the commercial test stand operated by Airborne Engineering Ltd. #AdditiveManufacturing #opensource #MethaLOX #ComputationalEngineering

On the 20th of November, Project Sunride successfully re-fired our Sunfire V rocket engine (affectionately known as Rusty), which was last hot-fired in June 2025 at the Race 2 Space competition. This engine runs on Liquid Oxygen and IPA and was generously additively manufactured for us by Aconity3D GmbH out of a copper alloy. We were able to carry out 6 firings in one day, which brings the total Rusty firings to over 9! The final burn pushed the engine to its limits, achieving 6.9kN of thrust, 50 bar chamber pressure and 245.8 seconds of specific impulse, all with no film cooling. We believe this is the highest specific impulse of any student liquid rocket engine which was helped by our high C* (combustion) efficiency of 96.41%. We also managed to capture impressive sets of data for the impact of film cooling and PDMS. A huge well done to the Sunfire Engine Team and thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s hot-fire! We’re extremely grateful to Airborne Engineering Ltd and Race 2 Space, as without the support of Race 2 Space and the Airborne team, none of this would have been possible. The University of Sheffield Faculty of Engineering, University of Sheffield Faculty of Science | University of Sheffield Sheffield University Management School United Kingdom Rocketry Association The Reece Foundation Space Hub Yorkshire Exotopic The University of Sheffield #ProjectSunride #Rocketry #Propulsion #Engineering #Sheffield #UniversityofSheffield #Space