Stofiel Aerospace Facebook
MK3 rocket in various stages of construction
Some time ago I got a press release extolling the virtues of the “First 3D Printed Tintin Rocket in Space” I watched the accompanying video with a touch of indignation, “haven’t we come further than this?” I thought. The video showed a 3D printed replica of the red rocket from one of Tintin’s most famed adventures. It was attached to a balloon that popped at the top of earth’s atmosphere, and the 3D print came tumbling back down to earth with all of the grace of a pigeon shot down in flight.
While I admire a bit of marketing (I’ve written about it now haven’t I?), I have to ask, what benefit 3D printing added to this excursion at all? Couldn’t I just have done the same with a Tintin book?
It’s this pointless kind of 3D printing that gives the industry a bad reputation; maybe plastic 3D printing is just for toys and trinkets? My indignation lasted but a single day until I saw a post on the 3D Printing News Subreddit. I lurk on the forum on the hunt for tasty morsels just like the one I uncovered when Brian Stofiel posted a short video of what looked like a firework not taking off in a bunch of rocks. In fact, Brian’s project is about so much more.
Brian’s ex-military and he’s spotted a gap in the market for, “On-demand access to low-earth orbit”. At the age of 35, he went back to school, learnt how to design rockets, set up Stofiel Aerospace and now he’s using 3D printing, bog-standard desktop FDM 3D printing, to achieve just that.
Credit: Stofiel Aerospace Facebook
MK3 rocket being fired
Brian is 3D printing rockets, actual rockets, then coating them with a proprietary chemistry of graphite and ceramic so that they can survive a short firing, enough to propel a small satellite into orbit. And he’s using a printer that costs a heck of a lot less than the one the 3D printed Tintin rocket was printed on alongside the budget PLA.
“I had a MakerBot and a Markforged, and I decided that I wanted to buy the cheapest printer possible and see if I could produce these rocket nozzles on a $175 printer,” Brian told TCT. “So I went and found a Prusa i3 kit, no computer runs it, no hard drive onboard, no LCD display. I've been producing the latest nozzles on this printer, and the whole point was - you don't need a $20,000 printer for every project.”
Stofiel’s ambitions are as lofty as the rockets it hopes to set off, but there is a clear need for better access to low-earth orbit. Think of the recent story on the rare Northern Royal Albatrosses, counting them has previously proved treacherous as they nest exclusively on some rocky sea stacks in the Pacific, now they are using super sharp imagery from the DigitalGlobe WorldView-3 satellite to count the birds. It’s safer, cheaper, and more accurate. Stofiel Aerospace could open that door to aerial research quickly.
The aim is to use weather balloons to reach 100,000 feet and then fire these disposable rockets and their cargo into low-earth orbit. Whereas currently, it takes about 6-8 months for a research project to send a cube-sat into space, Brian says they can get it done within a week, and because they’re using weather balloons, they don’t need launchpads.
“With our last test we fired a 3D printed rocket with a composite motor,” says Brian “We brought the temperature up to 2200°C, and it survived the first three seconds of the burn and then we lost one of our spikes supports but it continues to survive because of the interior design. We are trying to get to 23 seconds with the burn, and that would allow us to fly a PLA 3D printed piece of plastic on a real rocket going hypersonic.”
Stofiel Aerospace is only 6-8 months from flight testing, and 24 months from being fully operational. All thanks to a $175 3D printer.
