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Rocket Crafters is a privately held American aerospace manufacturer and small satellite launch provider based in Cocoa, Florida initially focused on low Earth orbit. Founded in 2010, the company is led by a group of former US military officers, aerospace professionals, as well as venture capitalists with the goal of providing rapid, inexpensive, and safe service to the commercial satellite industry. Rocket Crafters is currently developing rocket engine and rocket fuel technologies specifically designed to serve small-to-medium sized payloads and the smallsmat industry. Former NASA Astronaut Sidney Gutierrez became initially involved in the company in 2012 as a member of the board and later was elected to Chairman in 2015. Robert Fabian was appointed to Rocket Crafters’ advisory board in 2013 and formally joined the company in 2014 as Senior Vice President for Propulsion and a member of the Board of Directors. In May 2018, Fabian became President of the company. In 2017, Rocket Crafters was contracted by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to conduct a series of 5000-pound thrust engine demonstrations. In 2019, Rocket Crafters signed a Preferred Supplier Agreement with RUAG Space to conduct the first in a series of sub-orbital launches. As of 2020, the company has conducted over 50 lab-scale tests of its hybrid rocket engine. During this lab-scale series, these engines reached 1112.06 to 2224.11 kN (250 to 500 lbf) of thrust.

In February of 2020, Rocket Crafters initiated a test series of its 5,000-pound thrust Comet engine, a production-scale proof of concept test model of the STAR-3D™ hybrid rocket engine. The Comet was tested a total of three times. During each of these tests, the engine proportionally matched the company's earlier lab-scale prior performance models. On May 12, 2020, Rocket Crafters announced the conclusion of testing for its Comet hybrid rocket engine. With the completion of the Comet engine tests, Rocket Crafters is scheduled to initiate test flights of its STAR-3D™ engine in fall 2020. This initial test would mark the company's inaugural launch of a flight engine. The company is planning two additional tests, each of increasing apogee, one reaching the Kármán line, and the other beyond the Kármán line. Following the completion of these test flights, Rocket Crafters plans to begin its commercial service to Low Earth Orbit on its Intrepid launch vehicle.

Mission
Rocket Crafters’ mission is to make space access safe, affordable, and reliable. Currently, the company is developing its Intrepid™ vehicle with the intention of rendering space more accessible to the rapidly growing small satellite market.

Facilities
Rocket Crafters has development and test facilities based out of Cocoa, Florida. The company's offices are located in historic Cocoa Village, and its assembly, manufacturing, and testing grounds are located throughout the space coast.

STAR-3D Engine
The STAR-3D™ is Rocket Crafters' hybrid rocket engine, utilizing both liquid and solid propellants. The engine is mechanically simple, with its basic motor only consisting of a handful of components ranging from its helium tank to its nozzle. The engine has two moving parts in its core design, the throttle valve and the pressurant regulator. The STAR-3D™ hybrid rocket engine’s patent-pending vortex injector controls the amount of liquid oxidizer is allowed into the engine's fuel chamber, allowing for adjustable in-flight thrust. The engine's name is derived from its 3D-printed fuel grains and its four core properties: "Safe, Throttleable, Affordable, Reliable." Due to all solid fuel grains in the STAR-3D engine being 3D-printed, each design of the engine is nearly identical, limiting anomalies. Rocket Crafters’ Comet tests demonstrated that the STAR-3D™ hybrid rocket engine could scale from the laboratory to a size more commercially relevant. The engine is powered by an oxidizer, either liquid oxygen or nitrous oxide, and solid ABS (Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene) thermoplastic (consumer-grade plastic), meaning both fuel and oxidizer are non-hazardous at room temperature and uniquely transportable. Using readily available materials, Rocket Crafters is developing technologies intended to greatly reduce the price of competitive commercial rocket engines. Laboratory scale tests conducted from 2017 through 2020 demonstrated that the initial two iterations of the engine were capable of reaching 250 to 500 lbf of thrust. These lab-scale engines were manufactured based upon more traditional injection methodologies. In 2019, Rocket Crafters developed the next generation of STAR-3D engine design, the Cyclone series. These two successive iterations, which incorporated the company’s vortex injector design, demonstrated an ability to reach 2.5 kN (560 lbf) of thrust. Additionally, the engine’s valve design enables it to be aborted in-test prior to over-pressurization.

Comet
The Comet engine is a large-scale proof of concept test model for Rocket Crafters' STAR-3D engine. The engine is capable of 22241.11kN (500 [Pound (force)|lbf]]) of thrust. On February 13, 2020, the Comet engine experienced an overpressure malfunction in-test that resulted in debris, small brush fires, and damage to the test engine and test stand supporting the structure. Per standard rocket testing procedure, the test bay was cleared prior to initiation, and no individuals were injured during the incident. Following this event, Rocket Crafters discovered that the anomaly was caused by an initial failure in an ancillary part of the test engine which led to larger over-pressurization inside its combustion chamber.

Developed Technologies
=== System and Method for Uniformly Manufacturing a Rocket Fuel Grain Horizontally in a Single Section ===

3D-Printed Fuel Grains
Rocket Crafters engineers developed a system designed to linearly print fuel grains. The company has been utilizing this manufacturing process since 2019, marking a shift from its previous method of printing fuel grains in stacked rings.ref> When the fuel grain model is received by the 3D-printer, the model is oriented horizontally and divided into two-dimensional layers with defined footprint areas. Each layer is printed by applying successive fuel beads in a direction primarily parallel to the central core axis of the fuel grain model. A majority of Rocket Crafters’ engine designs consists of its 3D-printed fuel grains. Rocket Crafters’ patented method for 3D printing allows its fuel grains to be rapidly tailored and scaled on demand. As such, the grains are able to accommodate various thrust and time requirements. === Linear Throttling High Regression Rate Vortex Flow Field Injection System Within a Hybrid Rocket Engine ===

Vortex Injection System
Rocket Crafters' hybrid rocket engine design contains a vortex flow-field injection system capable of producing a high-speed sustained vortex flow field. The engine includes a generally cylindrical injection chamber with an inner circle lining the outer edge of the solid propellant grain. The engine's injection system inserts liquid oxidizer into the engine, producing the vortex flow-field. The injector includes at least one primary feed line to distribute the fluid through a pre-swirl chamber and multiple orifices along the inner edge of the injection chamber. The pre-swirl chamber connects to the injection chamber and at least one of the primary feed lines, able to redirect the flow of injected fluid from an axial to a centrifugal direction.

Launch Service
Following the completion of its sub-orbital and orbital test flights, Rocket Crafters is scheduled to begin its commercial launch service providing launches out of Cape Canaveral, Florida and two additional locations to private and public contractors with the aim of completing 100 launches per year. As of 2020, the inaugural launch is set to fly out of Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Intrepid Launch Vehicle
The Intrepid is Rocket Crafters' two-stage, small-lift launch vehicle optimized for commercial satellite payloads. It is an expendable launch system powered by Rocket Crafters’ STAR-3D™ hybrid rocket engines. In development as of 2018, the launch vehicle is being designed to send at maximum 500 kg of payload 550 kilometers into the atmosphere, in line with sun-synchronous orbit. The vehicle is designed to service Low Earth Orbit (LEO) payloads.

DARPA
In 2017, the U.S. Department of Defense via the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Rocket Crafters with a $542,600 grant to facilitate testing for its large-scale Comet engine. Following its reception of the contract, Rocket Crafters initiated an eight-month performance period in which it designed the 5000 pound-force peak thrust, throttle-capable hybrid rocket engine. These tests sought to verify the STAR-3D's technical reliability and consistency on a the large-scale necessary for small payloads.

RUAG Space
In 2019, Rocket Crafters and Swiss technology company RUAG Space signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at the 2020 Satellite Conference in Washington, D.C. Under the memorandum, RUAG and Rocket Crafters initiated a collaborative Preferred Supplier Agreement to foster the design, development, and procurement of a sounding rocket guidance and navigation system, nose cone, and aeroshell to support initial test flights of Rocket Crafters' Intrepid-1. Through this agreement, Rocket Crafters and RUAG began a joint-effort to further research and develop Rocket Crafters' launch vehicle infrastructure to accommodate and service the rapidly-growing small satellite industry.