A group of fourth-year mechanical engineering students on the Waterloo Rocketry team designed, built and tested a fully reusable rocket engine for their Capstone Design project.
Called Project Sisyphus, the engine will make test flying rockets significantly easier and more affordable for competitive rocketry teams.
Building from scratch — with no proprietary design guides available from organizations like NASA or SpaceX — the team applied knowledge from their fourth-year computational fluid dynamics course to solve the engine's toughest challenge: distributing fuel evenly across all 79 cooling channels. The Sedra Student Design Centre provided critical fabrication resources, and Faculty advisor Andrew Milne, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering, offered design guidance throughout.
Project Sisyphus won the best prototype award at the 2026 Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design Symposium, selected from among 42 teams. Both Godard and Gordon head to industry roles this spring — Gordon to SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas, and Godard to Toronto-based Canada Rocket Company.
Go to Student rocketry fires up with an advanced engine design for the full story.