AeroBing closer to goal of putting a rocket into space

At 100 kilometers above mean sea level (that’s 62 miles for non-metric folks), the Kármán line is the unofficial demarcation between Earth’s atmosphere and the dark vacuum of space.

Since 2019, members of ��������’s have aimed to cross that line. If they succeed — when they succeed — it puts Bearcats where only one other student-run organization has gone before.

Although most rocket builders are students from the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, AeroBing CEO Nathan Teig ‘26 likes to tell people “there’s room enough for everybody.”

“We want people who want to learn, and some of the most talented people we’ve had in AeroBing weren’t engineers,” he said in a recent interview. “They were just students who were super-interested in showing up and doing the work. We have a lot of fun, too!”

Teig, a mechanical engineering major, discovered AeroBing in his first year at �������� when he saw the group at the annual University Fest, a student organization fair on the Peace Quad celebrating the beginning of the fall semester.

Over the past four years, he has taken leadership roles in the group and worked his way up to “rocket boss,” with about 40 members also contributing their expertise. To reach for their space goal, team members break down what a rocket needs into different subgroups, including simulations, motor design, manufacturing and finance.

“My college experience has been school, social life and AeroBing — bouncing around through those three things,” he said. “It’s even better when they overlap.”

Earlier this fall, AeroBing went off campus to the Town of �������� Fire Department to static-fire its latest rocket, nicknamed Sabrina. While Sabrina didn’t leave the ground, the test offered insight into the innovations that the team added to the design.

“We took a big step with this motor. Not only did we reduce the mass of the hardware, we increased the mass of the propellant,” Teig said. “There was a lot of debate over where we should cut excess margin and where we should leave it. That’s part of the engineering tradeoffs.”

Few parts are reusable as the rocket evolves or grows, so keeping up with costs and production can be challenging. So can the postmortem required after every test.

“It’s really painful when you have to cut something that you spent a lot of time on in half to get information about it,” Teig said. “When it doesn’t work, it’s cut in half — and when it does work, you cut it in half anyway.”

In December, AeroBing members will travel to California to launch their newest rocket design, nicknamed Mary. Should all go well, Teig predicts that the team crosses the Kármán line in about 18 months. He will graduate before then, but he hopes to set up future students for success.

“Something I’ve learned by being in a leadership role is that the more ownership you give somebody over a project, the more likely it is to turn out well,” he said. “If somebody’s looking at a part and saying, ‘I machined that, I designed it, I test-fitted it, I installed it,’ there’s a lot of ownership behind that part. If you’re sending something to a CNC shop in China and getting it 10 days later, it feels different — physically and emotionally.”