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MARS Philosophy and Constitution

THIS DOCUMENTATION IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

The end goal of MARS is to make TMU have the best student rocketry in Canada. The founders of the team have come up with a long term mission to make this happen.

The MARS teams which will push the boundaries of student rocketry will only exist with a really strong community, that is constantly teaching and hiring people. This is why we make model rocketry our priority. It is the easiest to get into, and it invites you to competitions such as Launch Canada that will bring you close to experts. The 4" rocket team would not exist without the model rockets.

Mission Statements

Community first, technology second.

We will not develop any technology without a strong community of friends. People should hang out have disagreements, discuss and even fight, but resolve their problems.

Tips for leads: Do not discuss important matters over discord or text message, in person or call to discuss issues.

Things will get progressively easier the longer the team is around, and the community and technology will draw people in.

Open Source

The student rocketry community is quite open to sharing ideas. This makes it easier for new student teams such as MARS to get started. The end goal is to have a thriving space industry. The bottom line is that the more people we have that are knowledgeable in rocketry the better chance humanity has. This is largely the philosophy the rocketry teams I've spoken to have. This is one reason why MARS strives to open source everything we do. We stand on the shoulders of giants. As a small organization it is unfeasible to donate to every single open source project we gain knowledge from, so the least we can do is to contribute back the the community by open sourcing everything we do. We have everything to gain from the success of others. We strive to learn from and contribute to each step of the process.

What we open source

All code, PCB schematics, and CAD files should be made open source on github.

Documentation

Open source isn’t as beginner friendly as it sounds, so as the team is growing there will be documentation that never gets transferred into markdown and put on the website. But this is something we must always strive to do. A few of the reasons for this are:

  1. It makes the team easier to join if you know what is going on.
  2. The website is the way we build our reputation, and compete with other schools.
  3. The website is the first thing sponsors look at when checking out whether or not to sponsor us.
  4. If you have someone watching you, you are less likely to be janky. Jankyness one of our major enemies.

Software

KiCad > Altium, but nothing foss rivals solidworks.

Inspiration

We are proudly taking inspiration from a number of student teams and organizations. The very text you're reading is being ran with Material for MkDocs which we use for free. WE

Keep the team alive, and growing

Lots will change a long the way. The most important thing is keeping the team alive, not getting stressed, and keeping an open as well as open source community. Mars should also foster a bond between leads. One of the primary goals of leads on the team is to find younger years to replace themselves.

Team Structure

  • Director of MARS: Nikolai Sydorenko Oversees all activities, sets direction, and ensures smooth functioning of all teams. Sets major goals. Claims credit for success, and is responsible for failure.

  • Co-Director: Zeul

    • Director in Training: Eve Thamir

  • Logistics Team

    • Lead: Eve Thamir
      • Merch Lead: Amir
      • Media Lead: Maryelle
      • Sponsorship Lead

  • Sub-Teams:

    • Competition Team

      • Technical Director: Miguel Gutierrz In charge of CAD, and composite layup.
        • Avionics Manager: Eduardo
        • Avionics Maintainer: Anthony
          • Avionics Lead: Nathan, Kasper In charge of altitude calculations, 3D printing avionics bays
        • Leads: Newt, Ivan, Kedron, Baron, Jan
          • Leads in training
            • General Members

    • 4"-Liquid-Rocket-Team Team

      • Lead: Zeul Leads the Advanced (4” Liquid) Team. Should have general understanding of avionics, and liquid rocketry.

    • Certification Team

      • L3 Capitan: Miguel Gutierrz Acquiring L2 in summer in 2025
      • L3 Candidates Competition team leads graduate to L3 candidates. They must make design proposal to MARS, which will then approve or deny funding a portion of the rocket. This position will open in september 2025.

There are other roles such as sponsorship coordinator, merch lead, social media person. These roles will not be listed here.