Brunswick rocket-maker bluShift teases launch location on Downeast island
Screenshot courtesy / bluShift Aerospace
bluShift Aerospace’s founder and CEO, Sascha Deri, holds the camera out to show components of a biofuel-pwoered Modular Adaptable Rocket Engine for Vehicle Launch, or MAREVL, in development at his company’s headquarters in Brunswick. The rig seen here weighs at least a ton; the completed engine will be about 2 tons, he said.
Brunswick rocket-maker bluShift Aerospace is close to announcing a site for its planned commercial lift-offs, the company’s founder and CEO, Sascha Deri, said during an investor call yesterday.
The launch site is on an unbridged island in Washington County, but he wouldn't disclose exactly where.
“We found a town and a site that has been incredibly welcoming to what we’re doing, to the concept of developing new types of job here in the state of Maine, in a town that’s more traditionally known for fishing and lobstering,” Deri said.
Deri said his company is working with an attorney to create a lease agreement with the island’s owner.
“We are very, very close to announcing the launch site,” he said.
The island “seems to be particularly well suited for what we do."
Deri indicated that his confidence in the deal is such that his company has begun working with the local school in the town where the island is located, in order to include a student-made payload in the company’s first launch from the island.
The first launch is expected to be next summer.
Infrastructure
Deri said he most recently visited the island by boat last Friday with members of a construction company that’s familiar with doing construction on islands.
The location will involve building infrastructure that, at minimum, will include a heavy-duty wharf capable of craning a bluShift rocket in and out of a boat or barge; a short road or pathway; a launchpad; and storage and payload buildings.
The launch site and test site will be solar-powered with backup generators.
The solar power system will utilize a brand of lithium batteries called KiloVault. The batteries are produced by a renewable energy equipment provider called altE, which Deri also founded and leads.
Mission control
Additional infrastructure will be needed on the mainland. That will include a mission control facility and three ground-based antenna arrays.
Deri said he’s identified a possible site for mission control that’s also on an island but is connected to the mainland by a bridge. He said he met last Friday with a group of local residents who were open to bluShift’s use of an undeveloped land parcel to install a mission control facility. The site has a straight line of view from the envisioned facility to the launch site. It would also allow bluShift to host the public to view launches, he added.
One antenna array will be relatively close to the launch site, one a couple of kilometers away and the third about 40 kilometers away. Deri said that bluShift has come to an agreement with an institute relatively close to Bar Harbor where it can locate the third array, which will be capable of communicating with the rocket up to its to apogee.
Infrastructure investment
bluShift, based at Brunswick Landing, is developing a line of eco-friendly rockets to provide affordable, sustainable space launch services. The company is targeting universities, corporations and federal agencies that want to launch nanosatellites as far as 400 miles above the Earth.
In January, it launched Maine’s first commercial rocket and the world's first biofuel-powered commercial prototype rocket, called Stardust 1.0, from Loring Commerce Centre in Limestone.
The company is now building a larger biofuel-powered Modular Adaptable Rocket Engine for Vehicle Launch, or MAREVL for short, for successively larger rockets.
The engine will go into the next rocket iteration, the 50-foot-tall Starless Rogue, for suborbital launches.
Investment in the basic island-based infrastructure for the launch of Starless Rogue is expected to be about $1 million, said Deri. The company expects to get permitting, design and engineering underway this winter in order to begin infrastructure construction in time to launch Starless Rogue on a test flight next summer.
Other launch sites
The company is also looking at other launch sites outside of Maine. Deri said he’s been contacted by Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Additional launch sites, he noted, would allow the company to offer its nanostatelite launch services year-round, rather than the April-to-October timeframe envisioned for Maine launches.
Within the next four to five years, the goal is to grow the company from fewer than a dozen today to 40 to 50 employees, he said.
Deri is a 2021 Mainebiz Next List honoree.
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