SpaceFab

Funding Update

founder @ SpaceFab

Published on May 24, 2018

The funds from your investments were wired to us by Wefunder on Monday.  The net amount was slightly over $156K.

We are now busy putting the funds to work.  We have hired two interns for the summer who will be working on laser communications and mechanical engineering of our spacecraft. One intern is concentrating on mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cal State San Luis Obispo, where the cubesat standard was formulated. The second intern is concentrating on electrical engineering at UC San Diego, where there are student projects on 3D printed rocket engines, an autonomous rocket powered lander, and a mobile rocket engine test stand.

Rather than spending any funds on renting an office, we are converting home space into a an office and a development lab. The office will be big enough for our interns, and will include an enclosed space for high speed laser communications testing. 

The development lab will have electronic benches for assembly, test, and rework of printed circuit boards with surface mount components. There will also be space for 3D printers, with one printer large enough to print the entire 12U spacecraft. And there will be enough space for a drill press, power saw, and other tools.

We told you in our last report that we were preparing a proposal for the DARPA Blackjack program. We did receive feedback on our proposal abstract, and we were advised not to bother with submitting a full proposal, as we were wide of the mark. We did find the effort useful, though, and we have decided to make our laser communications bi-directional, so it can be used for both receiving and transmitting data either to the ground or to another satellite. We have also decided to make our satellite structure more manufacturable, by making it easier to assemble and dis-assemble.

So we are now very busy preparing for our new interns, then we'll all be busy working on various parts of our spacecraft for the next two or three months.