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Space

Biofuel-Powered Rocket Makes Historic Launch in Maine (pressherald.com) 54

Posted by EditorDavid from the Maine-event dept.
Despite bad weather and early technical difficulties, employee-owned bluShift Aerospace "made history Sunday afternoon when it launched its prototype rocket, Stardust 1.0," reports Maine's Portland Press Herald: The company became the first in Maine to launch a commercial rocket and the first in the world to launch a rocket using bio-derived fuel... It carried three payloads, two commercial and one, free of charge, from Falmouth High School... The rocket and payloads returned to the ground under a parachute shortly after launch and were retrieved by a team of snowmobilers. The rocket is intended to be reusable and environmentally friendly.

While the components of the biofuel remain a company secret, bluShift CEO Sascha Deri said it is solid, non-toxic and carbon neutral. "I can tell you this much, I discovered it with a friend of mine on my brothers farm here in Maine," he said. The company describes its business model as the Uber of space, where they will target a specific customer who wishes to send their payload into a particular orbit.

"We are targeting people that want to go to a specific orbit, they want to have control of their launches, they want to be the primary payload even though their payload is very small," Deri said.
The rocket is roughly 20 feet tall and 14 inches in diameter, the newspaper reports — noting that an earlier launch planned for January 15th had to be called off due to bad weather. "It turns out launching rockets is complicated, apparently it's rocket science," CEO Deri told them.

"We did learn a lot from that failed launch. We learned, first and foremost, that you can't rely upon weather websites, you really need to use a professional meteorologist."

The Associated Press also reports the rocket carried "a Dutch dessert called stroopwafel, in an homage to its Amsterdam-based parent company. Organizers of the launch said the items were included to demonstrate the inclusion of a small payload."
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Biofuel-Powered Rocket Makes Historic Launch in Maine More

Biofuel-Powered Rocket Makes Historic Launch in Maine

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  • "I can tell you this much, I discovered it with a friend of mine on my brothers farm here in Maine," he said.

    Farts.

  • Don't get me wrong, I'm sure all involved deserved their stroopwafel, but it's not really historic unless they exceed the Karman line at 100km; and it's not *particularly* historic unless they put something into orbit.

    • But but... the hydrocarbons! They're... different somehow.

    • "Stardust is a single-stage reusable prototype with 8 kg (18 lb) payload capacity that can reach maximum altitudes of up to 2 km (6500 ft)." In this case it made it to 5000 feet.

      I can carry a payload of 18 lbs to altitudes higher than 6500 feet, so perhaps I'm an innovative biorocket.

      They do have distant future plans for an orbital rocket for smallsats. Looks like it'll be a while, because their next step is Stardust 2.0 (Karman line), then Starless Rogue (250 km), then Brown Dwarf (still suborbital), then

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        I don't want to take away from what they've accomplished, but it's not historic. Not yet. Sugar motor rockets have gotten to 12 km, and that's also non-fossil carbon.

      • Just 'cause you can fart...

    • It's straight forward model rocketry, just like thousands that are launched every year.
  • ... assuming of course you did not burn fossil fuel to create those. And that is pretty normal "rocket fuel".
  • The German V2 and Chuck Yaeger's X-1 both ran on alcohol and liquid oxygen, as did experimental rockets in the 30's. The solid fuel is said to be non-toxic which certainly sounds more like ethanol than methanol, so I suspect that potatoes are involved.

    • "The German V2 and Chuck Yaeger's X-1 both ran on alcohol and liquid oxygen, "

      Well he said he discovered it on a farm, so it must have been peepaw's whiskey and meemaw's oxygen.

  • "biofuel"??? (Score:5, Informative)

    by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Sunday January 31, 2021 @08:30PM (#61013754)
    What "biofuel"? Ethanol is "biofuel" but it takes more energy than it puts out - it's a tax scam. "Biomass" is a catch word for generators that burn "biomass", trick is though, "biomass" is really trees. So you burning trees - the very things that filter the air converting c02-->o2 and just making c02 ... another tax scam. "biodiesel" is diesel with processed used fryer fat.. it took energy to make in the first place, it took energy to process, and you still have to mix it with diesel.. and when you do, the diesel engine is less efficient then pure petro-diesel, so it burns more to go the same distance or perform the same work.
    Pay attention, when someone hides what something really is, it's likely just buzzwords hiding a scam to suck up federal dollars.

    • Unles you are Maxwell's demon, *EVERYTHING* takes more energy than it puts out.

      I rather suspect you are Exxon's demon. Begone!

      • I would LOVE to see some type of clean energy generation. fuel cells, or solar that wasn't dependent on rare earth elements, functional fusion - however in the US, most of this is just smoke in mirror pushed by companies to make profit. Remember our "electeds" do not write bills. Bills are written by lobbyists for corporations who don’t care about you or I or the environment, only profit. My gut reaction is most of this is like the recycling push - a big lie that makes of feel better for no reaso

    • Ethanol is "biofuel" but it takes more energy than it puts out - it's a tax scam.

      No it doesn't, and it hasn't for years. What's wrong with ethanol fuel is not that it isn't energy-positive (because it is) but that it is grown continuously (without crop rotation) and it depletes topsoil. It's selling out the future of food for profit today.

      So you burning trees - the very things that filter the air converting c02-->o2 and just making c02 ... another tax scam.

      It can be done sustainably, although it's very hard to do cleanly because burning wood produces dioxin and soot.

      "biodiesel" is diesel with processed used fryer fat.. it took energy to make in the first place, it took energy to process, and you still have to mix it with diesel.. and when you do, the diesel engine is less efficient then pure petro-diesel, so it burns more to go the same distance or perform the same work.

      Biodiesel is diesel made from waste lipids, not fuel with fat. Fat is fuel! If you do nothing but filter and dewater oil you can mix it in w

      • The key piece you miss in ethanol is distribution. Ethanol is so corrosive it can not be "pipped" to blending refineries, it must be shipped in stainless steel over the road tankers. Cars/truck running ethanol get 30% LOWER fuel economy, menaning they burn 30% more fuel..don't forget the little things like, when you distill corn to make ethanol, you're diving up corn prices so all food costs more. . ALl in all, ethanol is no more than a farm subsidy that cost billions and is more harmful to the environment

        • Ethanol wouldn't be piped for its full journey, because farms are so distributed. At best a pipeline would only be used for a part of the transport. But in general, we need to stop using liquid fuels anyway. Pipelines and rail transport both result in spills.

          Cars/trucks do not run on pure ethanol in most cases, E85 is all but dead. I can't remember the last time I saw a fueling station with it. It has been supplanted by CNG/LNG for fleet use, which unlike ethanol or E85 can be run in engines with no interna

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          I always transport my ethanol in glass bottles, generally mixed with some sugar and fruit juice.

  • "I discovered it with a friend of mine on my brothers farm here in Maine". Let me guess - it's cow manure.

  • Sugar has been used as rocket fuel for decades. If you use a liquid oxidizer, you can even control the power output. Not full control, but over a range.

    The home recipe is powdered sugar and potassium nitrate in a tube made of brown paper packing tape (the pre-gummed stuff that you wet with a sponge). The advanced version uses a shell of vacuum formed fiber/resin composite (like glass, carbon fiber or kevlar) instead of paper.

  • no dessert (Score:4, Informative)

    by aRTeeNLCH ( 6256058 ) on Monday February 01, 2021 @01:21AM (#61014354)
    Contrary to most other comments, I derived the fact that this article is bullshit due to the stroopwafel being called a dessert, which it isn't. It's a treat that gets served with coffee at 11 or tea at half 3.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by pahles ( 701275 )
      Came here to say just that, it's a cookie!

    • That's what some include in the broad category of "dessert", subgroup of "candy", subgroup of "edible thrash", subgroup of "slow poisons" and "simple drugs".

      • I fail to see how candy is a subcategory of dessert, and your allusion to a joke by going for the unhealthy angle is fully misplaced, top stroopwafels have only good ingredients, (wheat flower, butter, honey, sirup) except for the sugar which you can't really get around in sweets...

  • You could call it "(synthetic) fuel from non-fossilized direct-processed lifeforms" , but the correct term is "stolen food".

    So keep your newspeak to yourself.

  • Bio-fuels are burning our seed corn. We need crops for food, fiber, and shelter. Civilizations that burn plants for fuel put themselves on the path to being extinction or being conquered by those that don't burn food for fuel.

    We did not send humans to the Moon until we had the technology to put on the lunar landers power packs able to keep their electronics from freezing during a lunar night. Every manned mission to the Moon carried a radio-thermaal power pack. NASA was desperate fro this material, a ma

    • We need civilian nuclear fission power

      Even if we did, and we don't, you would have completely failed to show that here. All your proposed uses can be done with solar.

      • You have failed to show we can get Mars on solar power alone.

        My intent was not to show it is impossible to get to Mars any other way. My intent was to warn everyone that without nuclear power we will drive our economy into the ground trying and failing to get to Mars. Once people embrace nuclear fission power is when we will send people to other celestial bodies to colonize them. This is a prediction, a warning, not a how-to guide.

  • If they didn't go there in electric cars, they're pointing out what a pointless exercise this was.

  • ... if they are an "employee owned" company?

    Surely, to be the Uber of space, they would have to:

    -- rely on a workforce of independent contractors each of whom own their own rockets and can be fired (ahem) at any moment for any reason;
    -- spend gazillions of dollars spreading disinformation and rewriting any laws they don't like to suit their business model;
    -- speak out against regulation, but then, after losing money hand over fist year after year, come crawling back to the government looking for a handout t
  • Didn't SpaceX just launch a crew capsule that was powered by a bio-fuel?

    Ya know, the one that went boom when it was trying to return to the launch pad?

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