River City Rocketry - University of Louisville

07/27/2025

🚀 Another successful launch weekend!
We launched our subcale rocket, Genuine Risk, along with two more L1 certifications. All of the flights went off perfectly! Couldn’t have asked for better launches. ✨

Congrats to our captain Charles and our Payload Lead Tyler for successfully completing their certifications! 🚀

———

01/19/2024

WE ARE SO BACK !!

Stay tuned for updates soon…

06/30/2019

Last week we were able to represent UofL as the only Kentucky team to compete in the Spaceport America Cup! We were on the stage twice, for first place in the SDL Payload Challenge and James Barrowman Award for Flight Dynamics as we predicted a flight of 10,091ft AGL and flew to 10,081ft.

For the competition, we learned a great deal and we can't wait to be back next year. We already have more off-season projects and plans for next year. Thanks everyone for your support!

River City Rocketry team competed in the 2019 Spaceport America Cup June 18 - 22 in Las Cruces, NM. The team earned two awards: first place in the SDL Payload Challenge and the James Barrowman Award for Flight Dynamics.

03/27/2019

Hi everyone, team-member Nolan is in need of help. He's a well-traveled member, so we're devastated that he's been hurt on a trip to Madagascar. Please help if you're able; we're all wishing Nolan a quick recovery and return to the United States.

Nolan is a great 22 year old who was tragically injured in a water accident. While dodging waves he hit a sandbar with his head. This resulted in a broken neck. He has already undergone surgery in Madasgar to fuse his vertebrae together. That was done. He is slowly getting some leg and arm moveme...

03/27/2019

Payload team has been testing the deployable UAV recently. It's designed to unfold from the launch vehicle at several thousand feet and autonomously fly afterwards. Seen here manually piloted by Hunter Lewis.

Hopefully flight videos soon!

03/26/2019

I'm going to have to drop the pretense that I'm able to keep up with the "one year ago" schedule. Anyway, this was the 3/18/18 launch, only a day after the launch in our last post.

The launch was successful, but but we'd soon find out that we shot too high and NASA would have us relaunch. Everything was going as smooth as gravel a month before competition. @ Elizabethtown, Kentucky

03/21/2019

Back last year in 3/17/18, RCR had its first successful launch of the 2018 season! It was a perfect flight, save some sections getting stuck in trees, as most teams probably are familiar with.

We'd seen enough of the Zenith getting destroyed, it was a nice break. @ Elizabethtown, Kentucky

03/12/2019

Vehicle members tested out the newly-made reefed main at the garage last week. It was freezing, but hopefully spring break and warm weather this week means that lots of progress will be made for RCR! @ JB Speed School of Engineering

03/09/2019

This week Sam Williams printed the best looking nose cone that's ever topped an RCR rocket! Printed at the University of Louisville 's additive manufacturing competency center, the AMCC, the nose cone will house recovery gear and altimeters. @ University of Louisville

02/21/2019

Thank you to .aviation for sending us these Boeing 757 escape slide tanks! These will be used in RCR's liquid rocket engine R&D, as part of the fluid system. Thank you for all the support, and for your work in the aviation industry!