Rocket startup MaiaSpace picks Polish institute to build its rocket’s upper stage engine
The smallsat rocket startup MaiaSpace has selected Poland’s Łukasiewicz Research Network’s Institute of Aviation to develop the engine that will power its Maia rocket’s top stage, used to put satellites into their final orbit.
In a 23 April update, the Łukasiewicz Research Network’s Institute of Aviation (Łukasiewicz–ILOT) announced that it had been selected by MaiaSpace to develop a rocket engine to power Maia’s Colibri kick stage. According to the announcement, the engine will be based on technology developed by Łukasiewicz–ILOT as part of its Green Bipropellant Apogee Rocket Engine (GRACE) initiative, a project financed by the European Space Agency under the Future Launchers Preparatory Programme.
Each new engine will be capable of producing 420 newtons of thrust, with a cluster of these engines powering the Colibri kick stage. However, the update did not specify how many engines would make up the cluster
MaiaSpace had previously indicated it was building its own Colibri kick stage engine. It appears that it has now decided to hire Lukasiewicz to do it instead.
The significance here is not this specific decision, but how it involves two different European commercial entities with no managerial input from the European Space Agency or any government agency. It really does appear that Europe’s aerospace industry has completely freed itself from the dictates of those government apparachiks.
MaiaSpace hopes to complete the first launch of Maia in 2026.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The smallsat rocket startup MaiaSpace has selected Poland’s Łukasiewicz Research Network’s Institute of Aviation to develop the engine that will power its Maia rocket’s top stage, used to put satellites into their final orbit.
In a 23 April update, the Łukasiewicz Research Network’s Institute of Aviation (Łukasiewicz–ILOT) announced that it had been selected by MaiaSpace to develop a rocket engine to power Maia’s Colibri kick stage. According to the announcement, the engine will be based on technology developed by Łukasiewicz–ILOT as part of its Green Bipropellant Apogee Rocket Engine (GRACE) initiative, a project financed by the European Space Agency under the Future Launchers Preparatory Programme.
Each new engine will be capable of producing 420 newtons of thrust, with a cluster of these engines powering the Colibri kick stage. However, the update did not specify how many engines would make up the cluster
MaiaSpace had previously indicated it was building its own Colibri kick stage engine. It appears that it has now decided to hire Lukasiewicz to do it instead.
The significance here is not this specific decision, but how it involves two different European commercial entities with no managerial input from the European Space Agency or any government agency. It really does appear that Europe’s aerospace industry has completely freed itself from the dictates of those government apparachiks.
MaiaSpace hopes to complete the first launch of Maia in 2026.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“Europe’s aerospace industry has completely freed itself from the dictates of those government apparachiks” is an overstatement, but this is a good step. The MaiaSpace vehicle won’t be very large – which likely explains the lack of traditionally suffocating bureaucratic “oversight” – but any degree of reusability in a European-built launcher would constitute a solid step forward. That doesn’t mean the Euros will be closing the yawning capability gap between themselves and SpaceX, but perhaps it will mean the rate at which that gap continues to increase will diminish at least a bit.
Maybe SpaceX could make some extra money by just selling Falcon 9 rockets, stripped of its reuse capabilities, to any customers. Seems to be a market for it.
The Russians and the PRC would, without doubt, be delighted to get their hands on a late-model Falcon 9, but federal law prohibits that. Federal law, in fact, would make it quite difficult to peddle F9s to any foreign nation, even allies. And our allies already have their own expendable rockets so it’s hard to see what advantage there would be for them in buying F9s stripped of their main reason for being. Then there’s the considerable additional complication of standing up F9-compatible launch facilities outside the US – which would also be subject to just as many US government legal and regulatory obstacles as any notional sale of the rockets themselves.
But the main reason this will never happen is that SpaceX isn’t interested. Its business model has always been launch-as-a-service, not rocket sales. That keeps everything here in the US, thus avoiding much government red tape and hoop-jumping.
And this will not change once SpaceX finally retires the Falcons. It has already retired Falcon 1, several earlier versions of Falcon 9 and its 1st-generation Dragon cargo capsule. It has made no effort to sell any actual hardware of these types or even production licenses for any of it. It would certainly be possible to find takers, but the money to be made simply wouldn’t justify all the legal and regulatory drama that would attend the effort.