Payton Aerospace
Engineering
A student-led aerospace club at Walter Payton College Prep, building the next generation of aerospace engineers, one workshop and one conversation at a time.
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A student-led aerospace club at Walter Payton College Prep, building the next generation of aerospace engineers, one workshop and one conversation at a time.
From 3D modeling to stress-tested bridge builds, our hands-on workshops connect textbook concepts to real engineering challenges.
Members present and explore how aerodynamic design, load distribution, and material choice determine whether a structure flies or fails.
Members design and construct balsa wood gliders from scratch, applying principles of lift, drag, and stability in a hands-on build session.
Teams design and build a parachute from limited materials to safely land a payload, applying real principles of drag, descent rate, and structural load.
Using only cardboard, tape, and a plastic bag, teams engineer a capsule to protect a raw egg through a two-story drop — structural design under real constraints.
Cleared for Takeoff puts Payton students in conversation with aerospace researchers, professors, and engineers from Stanford, Georgia Tech, Princeton, USC, and beyond. Eighteen episodes of honest talk about research, career paths, and what it actually takes to work at the frontier.
A student-produced series featuring aerospace professors, PhD researchers, and industry engineers from Stanford, Georgia Tech, Michigan, and beyond. Each episode is designed to make the field more accessible: what real research looks like, what careers in aerospace actually demand, and how to start building a path from high school to the frontier.
Stanford
Georgia Tech
Michigan
UIUC
USAFA
UC Berkeley
Princeton
USC
Duke
NASA
Cornell
Purdue
Updates on where our work is showing up, and who we're building with next.
Duke University's Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science featured our Cleared for Takeoff conversation with Professor Earl Dowell in their department newsletter, sharing it with their students, faculty, and alumni network.
We're in early conversations with the Adler Planetarium about a partnership to bring more hands-on aerospace programming to students across Chicago. Details are still taking shape, check back for updates.
Real conversations with real professors. Real workshops with real students. Here's what we've built.
