AIAA provides students at Rice with both academic and practical challenges that no course, and no other student organization, offers. We provide Rice students with aerospace design experiences to develop both technical and leadership skills, and we hope to encourage Rice to expand its aerospace education offerings so that students interested in the future of airplane design can begin formal studies as undergraduates. This academic year, as the Rice Flight competition team, we are competing in the international 2025 SAE Aero Design competition, in both the Regular and Advanced divisions, aiming to improve on our strong first-year performance in 2024.
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SAE Aero Advanced 2025 |
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For this competition, we are required to build an aircraft to deliver and recover payloads, and be capable of fully autonomous horizontal and vertical takeoff, flight, and landing with a 3.5 pound total gross takeoff weight. Our aircraft, Magpie, uses advanced real-time-kinematic GPS sensors and computer vision algorithms to precisely locate payloads weighing up to 1.5 pounds. |
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SAE Aero Regular 2025 |
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For the SAE Regular class, we are designing and constructing a 15-foot wingspan plane with a 750 watt (1 horsepower) power limiter to fly with a maximum weight of 50 pounds. Our aircraft, Condor, is also required to disassemble into sections fitting inside a 4-foot cube. To optimize the payload capacity, we wrote custom Multi-disciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) software using ANSYS Fluent and MATLAB. |
Rice Flight’s projects aren’t cheap, and we depend on sponsors to afford building materials, competition fees, and other attendance costs like transportation. We have several tiers of sponsorship, which, along with more information about the team, are explained in our sponsorship packet at http://aiaa.rice.edu/support-us. We are incredibly grateful for any contributions, and if you would like any additional information about what you would be directly supporting, please feel free to reach out to us at aiaaricechapter@gmail.com.
If you are interested in discussing how you can make a more significant impact on AIAA Rice and its projects through your current or long-term philanthropy, or to make a gift through appreciated securities, wire transfer, Donor Advised Fund (DAF), IRA Charitable Rollover, or through a deferred gift vehicle such as a bequest, please contact Katie Donovan at (713) 348-4612 or katiedonovan@rice.edu or Sara L. Rice, Executive Director of Development for Schools, at slrice@rice.edu or 713-348-3189.
Sponsorship Amounts:
- Glider - $500
- Rotorcraft - $1,000
- Fixed Wing - $2,500
- Spaceplane - $5,000