We Build Rockets
We are River City Rocketry. Founded in 2011, we are a passionate group of students from the University of Louisville. Over ten months, we design, build, and test a high-powered rocket to compete in an annual collegiate level rocket launch competition.
The team spent its first 7 seasons at NASA Student Launch. The team won 14 awards overall placing in the top five each year. Finally, during the 2016–2017 season, the rocket "Typhon Heavy" won the team a first place overall trophy for the first time since its inception.
In 2018, we targeted new sights and joined the Spaceport America Cup. In its first year, the team achieved international acclaim placing 8th overall of 122 teams. The 2018-2019 rocket "Justify" earned RCR its first James Barrowman Award for Flight Dynamics by soaring to 10,081 feet—99.9% of our estimated apogee. The autonomous stowable UAV payload also placed first in the SDL Payload Challenge. We continue to set our sights higher than before as we develop our first student-researched propulsion systems for the 2021-2022 season.
Spaceport America Cup Awards
NASA Student Launch Awards
2017 - 2018
3rd Place Overall
1st Place Safety Award
2nd Place Vehicle Design Award
3rd Place Project Review Award
2015 - 2016
2nd Place Overall
Safety Award
Website Award
2016 - 2017
Overall Winners
Vehicle Design Award
2014 - 2015
2nd Place Overall
Project Review Award
Vehicle Design Award
Safety Award
2018 - 2019
8th Place Overall
James Barrowman Award for Flight Dynamics
1st Place SDL Payload Challenge
"Nil sine magno labore." Nothing without great effort. The team would not be what it is today without the hard work of its members. The story of our hard work is captured in a number of videos, meticulously documented by the team's 2016-2017 season recovery lead, Evan Schurr.