Matthew Nelson
Launcher has received $1.5M in funds from the U.S. Air Force to carry out a full-scale test for a liquid rocket engine in 2020.
The E-2 engine will house a combustion chamber produced via AMCM’s M4K 3D printing machine and is designed to yield a thrust rate of 22K pounds-force, the company said Tuesday.
In addition, the company has used sub-scale iterations of the engine to help E-2 achieve a combustion efficiency of 98 percent.
USAF awarded the funding to Launcher during the military service’s Space Pitch Day event in San Francisco to speed up the engine’s development and testing phases. The company is set to feature a mockup of the engine’s combustion chamber at the Formnext additive manufacturing exhibition.
Launcher is a New York-based company that seeks to construct a rocket that will bring small satellites to the Earth's orbit.
