Brunswick rocket company’s fundraising soars

BluShift Aerospace, a Brunswick-based startup, announced that they surpassed the goal of $1.07 million for their Wefunder campaign that was launched in March 2021.

The crowdfunding campaign closed at midnight on April 4, adding another $100,000 of investment over its last days. With the help of nearly 1,300 investors, they managed to raise $1.1 million.

Now that they have surpassed their campaign goal, the engineers of bluShift Aerospace will continue to work on perfecting the full-scale MAREVL engine (Modular Adaptable Rocket Engine for Vehicle Launch), which was successfully tested last month at their Brunswick headquarters. This will ultimately clear the path for the company’s next rocket launch, the starless rogue in the next year.

According to the company’s website, the starless rogue is a state-of-the-art ride to suborbital space, providing some of the longest 0g time, at 6 minutes. Low launch accelerations (less than 5 grams) and no spin stabilization makes it an ideal candidate for fragile payloads needing exposure to space. With reduced payload, the Starless Rogue can be used for hypersonic testing by reaching velocities of Mach 6-7.

It will reach a maximum height of 350 kilometers, microgravity (the condition in which people or object appear weightless) time of 6 minutes, maximum acceleration of 5 grams, payload bay diameter of 24 inches and the maximum payload mass of 66.139 pounds.

“Over the next few months, we will be wrapping up the testing of the full-sized MAREVL engine which is an upper proprietary technology for combusting the bio-fuel. So, we will be testing and tuning it,” Sascha Deri, CEO and founder of bluShift Aerospace said. “Basically, once it is tuned, we will pivot to start building the full starless rogue and develop a light-weight version of that engine and within a year, we will be launching our customer’s payloads to space. In a month or so, we will begin an additional financing round with accredited investors to help finance the build out of the entire rocket and the launching of it.”

He added: “The primary reason for this next launch is to qualify for a program within NASA to allow us to be a flight provider that researchers can get funded for. This program is called the NASA opportunity flight program and it will give us between $350,000 to $550,000 per customer and we would have between three or four of these customers experiment on a rocket every time we launch.”

Additionally, in support of Maine’s emerging aerospace industry, the state Senate approved a bill from Sen. Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick. The bill, LD 1923, “An Act to Establish the Maine Space Corporation,” received unanimous, bipartisan support in both the Senate and the House.

As amended, LD 1923 would create a public-private partnership to facilitate the growth of space and aerospace industries in Maine referred to as the Maine Space Complex. The Maine Space Complex would serve as a central hub for Maine’s space industry, facilitate data storage and analysis, research and development, and grow and promote jobs in Maine as illustrated by the office of the Maine Legislature Senate Majority.

After the Senate approved the bill, Daughtry released a statement saying that the aerospace industry can contribute to boosting Maine’s economy over the next 20 years and provide jobs for people in the state.

“A new space economy of Maine could contribute between $550 million and 1.1 billion per year to the state in the next 20 years, including between 2,800 and 5,500 good-paying jobs. Maine needs to be prepared for coordinated economic development,” Daughtry said. “By establishing the Space Corporation, we’ll be ready to collaborate between existing and new industries to invest in Maine’s future. This proposal is specialized toward Maine’s needs and has the potential for Maine to fill in the niche of nanosatellite research and development to do innovative work such as tracking the impacts of climate change.”

Deri echoed Daughtry’s sentiments by highlighting the positive impact of his company on the job market in Maine thus far.

“When we first moved to Brunswick, I was only able to hire one person and now we have about 10 people that get paid in one form or another,” he said. “If we add in people who we contract and people who are actually working for equity within the company then we are probably around 19 people and most of them are in Maine. So, it has really exceeded my expectations.”

The Maine Technology Institute is an industry-led, publicly funded non-profit organization whose mission is to stimulate the growth of technology-intensive companies that create quality job across the state.

Deri says that MTI have been instrumental to his company.

He added: “Between additional sources of financing from the Maine Technology Institute and the crowd equity funding campaign, that is what really made it possible, and we are really appreciative of both our investors and MTI who has really been an investor in us too.”