William Moore
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A Showcase of William Moore's Work
Engineering Portfolio
From an early age, I’ve been driven by a curiosity for how complex systems work and a desire to build things that push the limits of what is possible. Aircraft, rockets, and spacecraft captured my attention not just because they moved—but because of the challenge involved in making them move. Flight and space exploration represent some of humanity’s most demanding engineering problems, and I was determined to understand and contribute to them.
What began with designing vehicles in simulation environments grew into building hardware in the real world—composite structures, propulsion systems, avionics, and full launch vehicle assemblies. I am motivated by advancing the frontier of engineering capability and helping design and build the vehicles that expand our reach beyond Earth.
International Rocketry Engineering Competition (IREC) Work
AKULA-SIERRA
Q3 2025-PRESENT
As the third vehicle i've worked as Chief Project engineer on, Akula-Sierra is a solid fueled two-stage rocket that targets a 45,000ft AGL apogee. Its airframe is made of 5” diameter Custom wounded Carbon fiber tubing, which stands 144” tall and weighs 88.5lbs at liftoff. The vehicle is divided into two stages, the booster named Sierra, and the sustainer named Akula. This vehicle is powered by in-house designed and manufactured solid motors, a N1000 and a N3300.
Akula-Sierra is designed to be the most ambitious project the team has ever taken on, combining the two years of lessons learned and the teams long-term plan of developing in-house built Hybrid Engines. This vehicle is used to bridge those goals, providing a harder challenge and altitude to hit, as well as a test bed for our in-house designed solid motors, which are a stepping stone to Hybrid engines.
The vehicle is still under development and will fly in the IREC '26 competition year.
SPACE COWBOY
Q2 2024-Q2 2025
SpaceCowboy is a solid fueled rocket that targets a 10,000ft AGL apogee. Its airframe is made of 6” diameter G10 fiberglass tubing, which stands 86” tall and weighs 43.6 lbs at liftoff. The vehicle is divided into three sections: Fin can, Electronics/Parachute bay, and Nose cone.
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SpaceCowboy flew in the IREC 10k COTS category in the '25 competition year. The flight was fully nominal thanks to extensive testing and lessons learned from Moonshot. This vehicle proved to the the most efficient 6" airframe at the IREC competition out of 150 teams. The team placed 2nd out of 16 Texas teams, and 32nd in the world out of 150 teams. The purpose of SpaceCowboy was to provide a turn-key operation for the 10K COTS category, and it succeeded with no major hiccups. It was noted by IREC staff as being the "Straightest flight of the competition". This platform gave us the confidence to push our boundaries in upcoming years with advanced projects like Two-Stage vehicles and in-house developed Hybrid rocket engines.
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MOONSHOT
Q2 2023 - Q2 2024
Moonshot is a solid-fueled rocket that targets 10,000ft AGL. Its airframe is made of 6” diameter G10 fiberglass tubing, which stands 85” tall and weighs 45.6 lbs at liftoff. The vehicle is divided into three sections: fin can, parachute bay, and electronics bay.
Moonshot flew in the IREC 10k COTS category in the '24 competition year. The flight was nominal up until apogee where deployment charges were fired to separate the vehicle and deploy parachutes. Pressure from the deployment charges leaked from the Parachute bay into the avionics bay and damaged the Avionics' barometers, this caused a premature firing of the main chute deployment charges, which, when not timed correctly, wont deploy the main parachute. The vehicle came down under only drogue and hit the ground at over 60mph, the structure of the vehicle was not compromised but the more sensitive avionics were. The team walked away from the competition year learning many lessons and was already thinking of the plan for next year's vehicle.