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3D-printed Aerospike Rocket Engine

kickstarter.com

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Re: 3D-printed Aerospike Rocket Engine

#21

Post by nadirkazan »

olympus wrote: post #9

I'm not sure this is really a good fit for a Kickstarter project. I love rockets/space/science/etc and fully support researching cheaper launch methods, but for most people to invest, they want to get something back. There are very few people who will/can donate to something on a purely altruistic basis. These guys aren't a charity and I can't even get a tax write-off. Pushing a button, while cool, is not really a re…

I am the creator of this Kickstarter project. Kickstarter mostly is used to promote the project. We're actually in fundraising mode in Boost accelerator before Demo Day 11th February. I agree with you that Kickstarter is not the best venue to raise money for highly technical project.

Re: 3D-printed Aerospike Rocket Engine

#22

Post by nadirkazan »

infogulch wrote: post #11
olympus wrote: post #9

I'm not sure this is really a good fit for a Kickstarter project. I love rockets/space/science/etc and fully support researching cheaper launch methods, but for most people to invest, they want to get something back. There are very few people who will/can donate to something on a purely altruistic basis. These guys aren't a charity and I can't even get a tax write-off. Pushing a button, while cool, is not really a re…

How about sending your photo to space and recovering it? What about sending any tiny object (with weight and size restrictions) into space and recovering it? The higher levels could offer to send a small custom payload into space (if not orbit) e.g. a smartphone with sensors. The first two would be more for the novelty (this ring was in space!), where the last might be for a university project or something.

I am the creator of this Kickstarter project. Upper stage without lower stage is certainly not reaching space. We didn't want to give people false hope. And the project there is mostly for a promotion, since we're fundraising in Boost accelerator before demo day

Re: 3D-printed Aerospike Rocket Engine

#23

Post by nadirkazan »

Cogito wrote: post #6

This is really cool. I would love to see more details about how the engines are 3d printed, and the plans for the designs. Will these engine designs be open sourced? Also, the rewards are a little difficult to parse. A list format would probably be easier to read, rather than one sentence with each reward concatenated to the rest with 'and'. I think having the 'all previous rewards plus ...' is a better format as wel…

I am the creator of the project. It is unlikely that plans and designs will ever become open sourced. Considering experience of DefDist and their issues with State Dept because of open plans of "Liberator" gun, we are being careful not to expose designs to outside of United States.

Re: 3D-printed Aerospike Rocket Engine

#24

Post by nadirkazan »

Crito wrote: post #8
johlindenbaum wrote: post #2

After being on a team that was launching cube sats with old ICBMs this reusable launch platform for science excites me!

Yeah, this is obviously a very highly ambitious project, but I think that it is the right sort of ambitious. Even if their ultimate plans don't come to fruition, it should be very interesting to see what they accomplish. This is the sort of project where the journey is as exciting as the goal. I'm a little surprised to see that they are going with pumped LOX instead of pressure-fed. With engines that small I would ha…

I am the creator of this project. We are doing pump-feeding because we have to grow as designers and analysts. First stage engines are going to be 9 times more powerful and will definitely need pumps. It is way better to mitigate risks by designing small scale low-risk propulsion system early

Re: 3D-printed Aerospike Rocket Engine

#25

Post by nadirkazan »

butThenAgain wrote: post #12

I'd be enthusiastic about nano-satallites, if the space-fairing component of human civilization had established reliable processes for keeping low earth orbit clean and free of orbiting pollution, debris and junk. The last thing we need is more high-velocity objects being randomly inserted into orbit by hobbyists, when there's no reliable means to clean up the objects left in orbit by predecessors. http://images.gizm…

I am the creator of the project. We are not expecting to launch nanosats higher than 400 km. or 600km in case of Sun Synchronous Orbit. All these nanosat orbits will degrade in 1.5-3 years and reenter and burn up in atmosphere.

Re: 3D-printed Aerospike Rocket Engine

#26

Post by infogulch »

nadirkazan wrote: post #21
olympus wrote: post #9

I'm not sure this is really a good fit for a Kickstarter project. I love rockets/space/science/etc and fully support researching cheaper launch methods, but for most people to invest, they want to get something back. There are very few people who will/can donate to something on a purely altruistic basis. These guys aren't a charity and I can't even get a tax write-off. Pushing a button, while cool, is not really a re…

I am the creator of this Kickstarter project. Kickstarter mostly is used to promote the project. We're actually in fundraising mode in Boost accelerator before Demo Day 11th February. I agree with you that Kickstarter is not the best venue to raise money for highly technical project.

Ah, that explains why the Kickstarter page looked so..., well, sloppy. (No offence.) It seems as if one requires an entire marketing department to start a "proper" kickstarter these days.

Re: 3D-printed Aerospike Rocket Engine

#27

Post by Geee »

Hey nadirkazan. With 3D printing, could it be possible and affordable to make really tiny rocket engines for other uses, like radio controlled flying things? I'm thinking something like a moon lander, but smaller (really small, quadrocopter size). I would buy that :)

Re: 3D-printed Aerospike Rocket Engine

#28

Post by xerophtye »

nadirkazan wrote: post #21
olympus wrote: post #9

I'm not sure this is really a good fit for a Kickstarter project. I love rockets/space/science/etc and fully support researching cheaper launch methods, but for most people to invest, they want to get something back. There are very few people who will/can donate to something on a purely altruistic basis. These guys aren't a charity and I can't even get a tax write-off. Pushing a button, while cool, is not really a re…

I am the creator of this Kickstarter project. Kickstarter mostly is used to promote the project. We're actually in fundraising mode in Boost accelerator before Demo Day 11th February. I agree with you that Kickstarter is not the best venue to raise money for highly technical project.

ahh. Was gonna email you telling you to offer ad spaces on your rockets (and/or classes) as reqards for the bigger contributions. Would attract corporate ppl.

(Not sre what kickstarter's ToS have to say about this though)

Re: 3D-printed Aerospike Rocket Engine

#30

Post by Gravityloss »

Pet peeve: this is a spike nozzle, not an aerospike.

The aerospike engine has a truncated physical spike that is extended by an "aerospike" that is formed by the pressurized turbine exhaust.

It's still crude and early, but it's very nice that people are actually building rocket stuff! Too bad ITAR is a problem...

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