Trial by Fire and Bulldust: Forging a Partnership at the Australian Undergraduate Rocketry Competition
- Joni Sytsma
- Sep 5
- 5 min read
At Outer Loop Engineering, we’re in the business of pushing the boundaries of autonomy in aerospace. But building the future isn’t just about code and hardware; it’s about community, collaboration, and a healthy dose of what we call “Type II fun.” Our recent venture to the Australian Undergraduate Rocketry Competition (AURC) with the Queensland University of Technology Aerospace Society (QUTAS) and Egress Space was a testament to all three.
As a pre-revenue startup, direct financial sponsorship is not always feasible. However, when the QUTAS leadership—a group I’ve come to know well through networking in Brisbane’s burgeoning space community—asked for support for their AURC campaign, I saw an opportunity for a different kind of partnership. For months, I’d been in talks with Egress Space, another innovative rocketry company. The solution became clear: Outer Loop and Egress could join forces to provide technical support and mentorship. In return, we’d get a small but valuable slice of payload size, weight, and power (SWaP) to fly one of our instrumented payloads.
A flurry of meetings solidified the plan. Our mission: design and manufacture a portion of a CanSat—a cylindrical payload measuring 66mm in diameter. With QUT’s payload sharing the space, we had a tight 90mm of height to work with.
What followed was an intensive two-day engineering sprint. Our team of five brilliant QUTAS interns and I assembled three custom autopilots, integrating a dense sensor package: seven inertial measurement units (IMUs), four barometers, and three GPS/magnetometer units. We powered it with a custom battery pack, spot-welded from six alkaline AA cells. At the end of the sprint, we had a fully tested, tightly integrated payload logging all sensors at 2 kHz and running our flight software. After a rapid-fire series of technical interface meetings and design reviews, the combined OLE/QUTAS payload fit perfectly. It was a showcase of rapid, agile development—a core tenet at Outer Loop.
The Long Road to White Cliffs
With our hardware delivered, the next challenge was logistics. Egress generously offered to get me to the launch site in White Cliffs, NSW—an otherwise grueling 16-hour drive from Brisbane. The plan was for me to fly to Adelaide and join Thomas from Egress in their RV, a mobile command center for their own outback testing. A last-minute delay with our promotional materials added a detour: I flew to Sydney to retrieve them before finally landing in Adelaide. Thomas greeted me, and we immediately set off towards Broken Hill, driving straight into a storm of sleet and ice. The RV shuddered with every gust of wind. Our journey had an inauspicious start when a low-hanging petrol station roof met the top of our vehicle.
Fortunately, Thomas’s quick thinking minimized the carnage to a torn-off aerial and a cracked air-conditioner housing. A close call!
The weather slowed us, but we managed to find a crowded pub in Broken Hill for a late dinner, sharing a table with friendly locals. After a quick grocery run, we pushed on into the night. Around 11:30 PM, our GPS rerouted us around a closed road, adding another 30 minutes to our journey. This final stretch was the ultimate test of endurance. Swapping driving shifts to fight fatigue, we navigated a road teeming with Australian wildlife: kangaroos, wallabies, emus, goats, and even a wombat took turns darting into our headlights. Utterly exhausted, we finally pulled into the White Cliffs caravan park at 1:45 AM.
The Calm and the Storm
Saturday brought howling winds, grounding all launch activities. We took the opportunity for a much-needed sleep-in before attending to some office work from our mobile home. That afternoon, we explored the opal fields, a unique landscape of deep shafts and soft, frangible rock. That evening, Egress hosted a BBQ for the QUTAS team, where the smell of sausages mingled with the scent of epoxy as the students performed last-minute rocket surgery. The forecast for Sunday was perfect for launching, and the air was thick with anticipation. I shared stories of past launches—both triumphant and explosive—to help calm the students’ nerves. Such is the rocket business: a crucible of preparation, anxiety, and hope.
Launch Day: Hopes and Dreams on a Pillar of Smoke
We were up and at the launch site early on Sunday, navigating the behemoth RV down a
rough track. As the first rocket of the day was being prepared, the "rocket fever" kicked
in—that giddy, heart-pounding excitement that justifies all the travail.
5… 4… 3… 2… 1… The first rocket, a hybrid, roared off the rail with a beautiful, smokeless blue-purple flame, deploying its parachute flawlessly at around 2,500 feet. The next salvo saw rockets streaking towards 10,000 and 30,000 feet, their recoveries painting thin circles of smoke against the vast blue sky.
Finally, the QUTAS team arrived in a cloud of iconic red bulldust. They leaped into action, a whirlwind of checklists and assembly. Thomas and I set up our company flags, swept up in the contagious energy. Their rocket was prepped, checked, disassembled, reassembled, and finally carried to the pad.
5… 4… 3… 2… 1… A sparking, chuffing motor flung our collective hopes and dreams skyward. The fireworks were a surprise, but the show was spectacular! Then, the distinct "pop" of a deployment charge. We watched as the aft section of the rocket began its gentle descent under parachute. The front section, however—containing our payload—continued on a ballistic trajectory.
My stomach sank. We hadn't designed the payload for that kind of rapid deceleration. The front section hit the ground with an audible whump. While the QUTAS team went to recover the pieces (puncturing two tires in the process—an outback rite of passage), my anxiety mounted. After the judges assessed the vehicle, I finally got my hands on our hardware.
The first signs were mixed. Our custom battery pack was still functional, with LEDs still blinking on the autopilots. However, the QUTAS payload's power lead had been severed on impact. The tight integration that is our mantra—"if it ain't tight, it ain't right"—meant the payload was thoroughly discombobulated within its housing. After careful extraction with hand tools, I held three blinking autopilots and a spaghetti mess of wires.
Back in the RV, I began the painstaking process of checking the SD cards. The first was blank. Formatted. The second was inert. Completely dead. My hopes rested on the last card. I inserted it, held my breath, and… a file appeared. Data!
I quickly uploaded it to our cloud post-processor. Moments later, the plots rendered. We had it all: the ascent, the parachute deployment anomaly, the chaotic tumble, and the final accelerometer reading maxing out at over 30g.
“The data are good!” I shouted, first to an empty RV and then to the QUTAS team, who met the news with applause. In rocketry, an outward failure that yields good data is a resounding success.
The Return: More Adventure and Reflection
The day ended with a final salvo of rockets and a celebratory party at the pub. The drive home was no less adventurous, featuring a 2 km standoff with a kangaroo on the road and a tense moment running out of fuel 15 km from Wilcannia. My improvised roadside dance—a mix of the Macarena and Gangnam Style—successfully flagged down a kind couple with a spare jug of diesel.
After a quick detour for a "forest bath" and a trail run along the Grand Canyon in the Blue Mountains, I was finally at the Sydney airport, caked in bulldust and exhaustion. Stepping onto the plane, I thought, "I'm never doing that again."
But I will. This life of fire, noise, and extreme speed is built on Type II fun—miserable in the moment, but glorious in retrospect. The rocket fever is incurable. It’s the collective madness that drives us to build, to fly, to fail, and to learn. And we at Outer Loop Engineering can’t wait for the next countdown.