Joe Pfeiffer
Computer Scientist
Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States
Summary
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RockstarJoe Pfeiffer is a computer scientist and retired New Mexico State University CS professor with eight years of hands-on software development experience and a long-standing passion for rocketry. Based in Las Cruces, he has made substantive back-end contributions to the well-known OpenRocket open-source project, optimizing aerodynamics and motor calculations and improving Java-based UI components. He blends academic rigor with practical engineering—comfortable refactoring legacy code and shipping reliability-focused fixes. Outside of code, he’s an actor and director, a rocket enthusiast and dog lover, bringing a creative, detail-oriented mindset to technical problems. His profile reflects someone who translates domain expertise into usable simulation tools while keeping a curiosity for both hardware and human-facing aspects of projects.
8 years of coding experience
Github Skills (9)
simulations10
simulation10
javas10
aerodynamics10
java10
rocket9
ui-design9
front-end-development9
uid9
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
openrocket/openrocket
May 2018 - Jan 2023
Model-rocketry aerodynamics and trajectory simulation software
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:11 reviews, 494 commits, 515 PRs in 4 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Joe primarily contributed to the development of the OpenRocket software, focusing on the Java codebase. Their work included fixing bugs related to UI components, such as blank combobox popups, and implementing features. They also modified existing code and refactored parts of the application, making significant contributions to the software's core functionality and user interface. Furthermore, they optimized existing code, particularly within the motor and aerodynamic calculation areas.
simulationaerospaceflight-simulatorjavamodeling
openrocket/orhelper
May 2024 - Oct 2025
orhelper is a module which aims to facilitate interacting and scripting with OpenRocket from Python
Contributions:1 review, 4 PRs, 1 push in 1 year 4 months
pythonscripting
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