PARSEC Caltech Rocketry

Test Stands

Our test stands — the hardware every other piece of hardware must survive. Led by Monolith, they let us hot‑fire LOX/kerosene engines with remote operation, full instrumentation, and a healthy respect for cryogenic oxidizer.

The stands

Operational

Monolith

Our flagship hot‑fire stand and the workhorse of the program. RUDy fires on Monolith today; ICICLE will qualify here before it ever flies on Icarus. Every run is operated from a safe distance by the Ground Support and avionics teams — propellant loading, pressurization, ignition, abort logic, and data acquisition, all remote and all instrumented.

CAD line drawing of the Monolith test stand with mounted valves
Monolith schematic
The Monolith test stand venting cryogenic propellant during LOX chilldown
Monolith LOX chilldown
PARSEC members preparing Monolith for a hot fire at sunset
Preparing Monolith for hotfire

In development

Igniter Test Stand

A smaller stand dedicated to testing our augmented spark igniter.

Planned

Megalith

The largest — and last — stand we’ll ever need: built for higher chamber pressures and roughly three times the propellant volume of Monolith.