LLMs for Engineering: Teaching Models to Design High Powered Rockets
2025/04/27 by Toby Simonds, Simonds, Toby · 10 voices
Materials Science · Computer Science · Decision Sciences · #Machine Learning in Materials Science #Software Engineering Research #Scientific Computing and Data Management
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.19394
Abstract
Large Language Models (LLMs) have transformed software engineering, but their application to physical engineering domains remains underexplored. This paper evaluates LLMs' capabilities in high-powered rocketry design through RocketBench, a benchmark connecting LLMs to high-fidelity rocket simulations. We test models on two increasingly complex design tasks: target altitude optimization and precision landing challenges. Our findings reveal that while state-of-the-art LLMs demonstrate strong baseline engineering knowledge, they struggle to iterate on their designs when given simulation results and ultimately plateau below human performance levels. However, when enhanced with reinforcement learning (RL), we show that a 7B parameter model outperforms both SoTA foundation models and human experts. This research demonstrates that RL-trained LLMs can serve as effective tools for complex engineering optimization, potentially transforming engineering domains beyond software development.
Discussions
- LLMs for Engineering: Teaching Models to Design High Powered Rockets [hn, 124 points, 45 comments]
- the era of the smol specialist model is about to dawn. followed by smol agents trained to collaborate. each weak in their own right, apes together strong. arxiv.org/abs/2504.193... [bsky, 16 points, 0 comments]
- LLMs for Engineering: Teaching Models to Design High Powered Rockets https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.19394 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- Highly constrainted environment, but good performance [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
- https://bsky.app/profile/news.ycombinator.com.web.brid.gy/post/3lo5qdpolwuz2 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- LLMs for Engineering: Teaching Models to Design High Powered Rockets #HackerNews https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.19394 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.19394 大規模言語モデル（LLM）の物理工学分野への応用は未開拓です。 この論文では、LLMの高性能ロケット設計能力を評価します。 強化学習（RL）で強化されたLLMは、人間の専門家を上回る可能性があります。 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- LLMs for Engineering: Teaching Models to Design High Powered Rockets https:// arxiv.org/abs/2504.19394 # arxiv # llm # llms [mastodon, 0 points, 0 comments]
- LLMs for Engineering: Teaching Models to Design High Powered Rockets [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- LLMs for Engineering: Teaching Models to Design High Powered Rockets https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.19394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43851212 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
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