More than a year after publicly identifying a Down East town where it would like to expand, a fledgling rocket company based in midcoast Maine says it has some hurdles to clear before it starts building rockets for commercial launches.
Sascha Deri, the Maine native who founded Brunswick-based bluShift Aerospace, said the company needs to build upon its successful rocket tests and then get approval from the Federal Aviation Administration before it lines up its first commercial launch.
After the company proves it is capable of conducting commercial launches, it then would seek to build a rocket manufacturing site and marine launch pad in Steuben, he said.
In addition to clearing some development hurdles, the company needs capital. It won’t be able to begin building small, environmentally-friendly rockets in Maine and then launching them south over the Gulf of Maine until it attracts investors who are willing to help it get off the ground financially, Deri said.
“They want to see you exit your research and development phase, which is essentially where we still are,” he said. “We still want to get a commercial launch under our belts.”
The Brunswick firm is hoping to establish itself in a niche of the booming space business, which has rapidly expanded in recent years as private companies across the globe — including some in Maine — aim to compete for roles in both publicly and privately-funded space missions. BluShift has developed rockets that run on environmentally-friendly, non-toxic biofuel and will carry small satellites known as cubesats into low orbits around Earth.
Deri has said Down East is a good location for such operations because of the coastline. The rockets would carry the satellites south above the Gulf of Maine before delivering them into north-south orbits that cross over the Earth’s poles. A barge with retractable legs to stabilize it a couple of miles offshore would be used to launch the rockets, which would be between 20 and 80 feet long — much smaller than rockets used to carry heavy payloads and people into space.
A rocket production facility would also be built in Steuben, not far from where its rockets would launch from out at sea, Deri said.
Deri said the company is ramping up testing of its rockets and plans this November to conduct a 60-second test burn on the ground. Sixty seconds should be long enough to launch a rocket through the stratosphere up to an altitude of about 50 kilometers, or a little more than 30 miles. The satellite on board then would essentially coast up to an altitude of about 100 kilometers, where it would enter its orbit while the rocket falls back to Earth with the help of parachutes and then is retrieved from the ocean, according to Deri.
BluShift hopes that 60-second ground test will enable it to win FAA approval for a commercial, low-altitude launch of 8 to 10 kilometers, which likely would be conducted at Spaceport America in New Mexico, a licensed space launch location. Having that commercial launch on its resume would help pave the way for bluShift to solicit funding for developing its launch operations in Stueben, Deri said.
“Building our launch operations in Steuben is still very much on the table,” Deri said. “We are eager to be far forward of where we are today.”
