We Built a Self-Refueling Exploration Rocket 🚀 | Wind Down Wednesday

The Cannonball Run space program is beginning to take shape. Tonight, we stopped trying to make one rocket do everything and began developing two specialized vessels: • The *Platformer* carries the Trailblazer and orbital cargo needed to establish a rocket platform. • The *Explorer* lands behind it, refuels itself, operates an onboard telescope, and continues uncovering the star map. The core breakthrough was the Explorer’s refueling system. By carrying CO₂ inside the rocket and routing it through the interior gas fitting, we were able to pipe that fuel directly back into the engine after landing. It worked—but only once the rocket had power. That exposed a critical failure in the design: CO₂ engines do not generate electricity during flight. Without a dependable onboard power supply, the Explorer can land with fuel available and still be unable to pump it into the engine. The interiors also need more work. Atmosuits dramatically extended the Seeder’s working window, but poor gas circulation, excessive cabin pressure, cold sleeping conditions, stress, and CO₂ accumulation still caused multiple failures. The overall sequence appears sound. The rockets simply aren’t mission-ready yet. We also made an unexpected discovery: the steam engine has the same 10-tile maximum range as the petroleum engine while requiring substantially less research. That makes steam the current leading candidate for our eventual one-way *Omega rocket* to the Temporal Tear. The Workshop helped uncover several of tonight’s most important findings: • Redneck identified the steam engine’s range, exposed the CO₂ engine’s lack of power generation, and challenged several assumptions about the rocket interiors. • Stinger raised the onboard-power question and proposed filling the steam engine through steel gas-canister infrastructure. We didn’t leave with finished rockets. We left with something more useful: a validated two-vessel strategy, several clearly identified failure modes, and a much better direction for the next revision. 🔧 Join The Workshop on Discord:   / discord   More Oxygen Not Included experiments, rocket designs, automation, and engineering coming soon. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. And leave things better than you found them.