Maine-based blushift Aerospace has made waves as they develop a unique line of rockets powered by bio-derived fuels to launch tiny satellites into space. They are hoping these waves will be enough to reach their crowd equity funding goal of $1.07 million. So far their development of a small and dedicated launch service has helped them reach the halfway point.
Blushift Aerospace has made it clear that they intend to create novel rockets and novel launch methods. The industry is working on developing rockets to take small payloads to space – but few are working on a small launch experience. This experience would lower costs for launch operations – a huge advantage in the early stages of space travel.
The Maine location expects to reduce the cost of launch site logistics by 90%. blushift Aerospace uses a proprietary, nontoxic solid biofuel and hybrid rocket technology to simplify the complexity of a traditional rocket engine. The biofuel is less expensive to make as it uses materials easily sourced from farms and has better performance than petroleum.
The plan of providing a dedicated launch service for customers like civil and academic researchers means they can see their launches occur on the timeline they want, he said.
To further accommodate customers, bluShift plans to make its bays configurable for specific payload sizes and shapes, up to certain size and weight limits defined by the payload bays — even making it possible to “blow” the windows at altitude for customers who want their experiments to have direct access to space.
They conducted a prototype launch in January, sending a 20-ft rocket called Stardust 4,000 ft up, with 2,000 lbs of thrust. Stardust carried several small customer payloads and proved the design was ready to be scaled to a full-size engine for larger rockets. They are working on this crowd equity funding to help development and support of the next rocket launch iteration aiming for 40,000 ft, and then again but reaching space.
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