Launching a Passion

Sean McConoughey’s (’28) fascination with rocketry began early. By 14, he had already earned his NAR Level 1 High Power Rocketry certification and developed a custom-built avionics system with a live data downlink to a ground station he built himself. But his passion didn’t stop there.

“After reaching that milestone, I realized that the next step wasn’t to push further alone, but to do something bigger with a team,” Sean said. That realization sparked the launch of his own American Rocketry Challenge (ARC) team alongside a few close friends.

After qualifying for NASA’s Student Launch Initiative — a distinction earned through a competitive selection process in collaboration with The American Rocketry Challenge (ARC) and NASA’s STEM outreach — Sean led his three-person team to a top-25 national finish, landing 17th out of more than 800 teams.

Along the way, he navigated setbacks, including a streak of early test flight failures and a critical thrust-to-weight issue near the end of the season. His redesign — a custom 10-foot launch rail — helped stabilize launches and carried the team to nationals.

The American Rocketry Challenge

The ARC is the world’s largest student rocket competition, designed to inspire middle and high school students to explore aerospace through hands-on, team-based engineering challenges. Sponsored by organizations like The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), ARC requires teams to design, build and launch a rocket that meets precise mission criteria — encouraging technical excellence, creativity and collaboration.

Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University is proud to support ARC participants through its ARC Scholarship, which is awarded to outstanding students who have demonstrated leadership, innovation and resilience through the competition.

For recipients like Sean, the scholarship not only helps make an Embry‑Riddle education more accessible — it also affirms the university’s commitment to developing the next generation of aerospace leaders.

Building Skills Beyond the Rocket

As the ARC team’s founder and leader for three years, Sean’s responsibilities extended well beyond engineering. “I learned how to clearly communicate goals and feedback, manage team operations and coordinate tasks around individual strengths,” he said. That included everything from training new teammates to securing sponsorships and negotiating launch site access.

The team also embraced innovation. Their most notable design feature was an interchangeable fixed-drag system — 3D-printed plates that allowed them to precisely tune apogee without active software, backed by a data-driven altitude prediction model.

Those lessons in leadership, communication and iterative design laid the foundation for Sean’s next big launch: college.

Choosing Embry‑Riddle

Before choosing Embry‑Riddle, Sean was already charting a path in aerospace as a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering major — a decision shaped in part by his transformative experience with the ARC.

“ARC showed me that I had the resilience and drive needed to succeed in aerospace. More than that, it gave me experience leading complex technical projects, handling failures and coming back stronger each time,” he explained. “That experience gave me the confidence to pursue aerospace engineering at the next level, and it made Embry‑Riddle the obvious next step.”

Sean was drawn to the industry-driven environment at Embry‑Riddle’s Daytona Beach Campus — from the hands-on research to the close-knit student community. Thanks to the ARC scholarship, he was able to immerse himself fully from day one.

In just his first year, he became a research assistant in both the Center for Aerospace Resilient Systems (CARS) and the Space Robotics and Generative Estimation Lab, working on projects such as global navigation satellite system (GNSS) spoofing detection and fault monitoring in autonomous systems.

From ARC Team Leader to Rocket Lab President

Sean also joined the Experimental Rocket Propulsion Lab (ERPL), where he began as a ground controller for hot-fire campaigns before taking over the electronics division. Now club president, he’s helping lead Project Moe, a liquid bipropellant rocket designed to reach over 55,000 feet — a potential collegiate record.

Through it all, Sean says Embry‑Riddle has helped him grow not only as a technical contributor but as a leader. Faculty like Dr. Cagri Kilic, who saw potential in his ARC background, offered mentorship and early research opportunities.

“Between my research and leadership in ERPL, I feel well integrated into the Embry‑Riddle engineering community, both in terms of pushing boundaries on technical projects and mentoring newer students coming into the rocketry and research ecosystems.”

Eyes on the Horizon

Looking ahead, Sean hopes to work in mission control or test operations environments where precision, preparation and quick thinking are essential. He says his current roles at Embry‑Riddle are already preparing him for those high-stakes environments.

“The biggest difference between ARC experience and college-level projects? Complexity and specialization,” he explained. “That’s pushed me to build deeper technical fluency in my domain, while also developing broader systems awareness. It’s a more demanding environment, but that’s exactly what I came here for!”

His advice for ARC students thinking about college? “Don’t rest on your ARC success — build on it. The technical bar in college and industry is far higher, and what sets people apart is how they respond to failure and unknowns. Push yourself into uncomfortable projects, fail smart and keep learning,” he shared.

When asked what mission he’d love to build, Sean didn’t hesitate: “It would be building the infrastructure for sustained human presence on Mars ... That kind of mission will test every part of what we know — engineering, operations, human factors — and I’d love to play a part in making it not just possible, but routine.”

For Sean, rocketry has always been about making an impact. Whether he’s mentoring new students, leading record-setting projects or imagining the systems that could sustain life on Mars, he’s guided by a foundation in teamwork, resilience and exploration.