DART
REAL ARTISTS SIMPLIFY
TO DATE
PAYLOAD
MANUFACTURED
OVERVIEW
74 cm
51 mm
1,25 kg
640 g
540 m
Glass Fiber
EVOLUTION
Building on the experience gained from the Doge rocket, we began developing a rocket for the 2025 Czech Rocket Challenge—the Dart—over Christmas 2024. This rocket allowed us to apply everything we had learned while building the previous two rockets and transform it into our most advanced rocket to date. The main goal was to maximize the amount of water we could carry above 500 meters.
In the early versions, we experimented with a wider fuselage, but we gradually realized that a slimmer and longer design better met the aerodynamic requirements and reduced air resistance. Development involved extensive research and testing; for example, the stabilizers alone went through 14 different versions before we found the absolute best combination of thickness and strength. Every element of the rocket was carefully designed and optimized to ensure that the Dart was truly a top-tier competition rocket.
UNIBODY
Dart’s greatest advantage was that, unlike our previous rockets, its body could not be disassembled into several parts. The entire unibody weighs only 50 grams, so the competition electronics, the 3D-printed nose cone, and the parachute accounted for the majority of the remaining 150 grams of dry weight (excluding the motor and payload). We focused on every gram; we managed to reduce the stabilizers from 2.5 to just 1.25 grams each, and the motor mounting screw from the original 8 grams to 3 grams. The whole process was about constantly asking ourselves: “Is this component really necessary? Can we do without it?”
The development itself, however, was not easy. Dart wasn’t just one rocket; 12 prototypes were built for testing, several of which were destroyed, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Nevertheless, Dart became the most innovative rocket we’ve built so far, and at the same time, the platform from which we’ve learned the most for future projects.
