Project Spartan Spear is a student team from San Jose State University dedicated to delivering CubeSats into space. The goal is to deliver these miniature off-the-shelf satellites into orbit quicker, more reliably and cheaper than current methods.
The team of seven students is running a Kickstarter campaign to fund their rocket project. This current round of funding will cover the cost of the team’s engine. The first launch of the rocket is expected to happen in the next few months.
http://www.projectspartanspear.com/
Spartan Spear is the students’ senior design project, with the design work being done in the first semester and the build (with concentration on the engine) happening in the second semester. San Jose State is already known for involvement with CubeSat development and a tangential goal of this project is to help future student and tech startups launch their projects into space. Using CubeSats for zero-g manufacturing, crystal formation tests, or planetary imaging applications will be valuable to entrepreneurs trying to prove their products.
As student projects go, Spartan Spear is very ambitious and will be incredibly useful if the team is successful. The Kickstarter campaign page and the project website have great information but would benefit from more detail. The process of manufacturing the rocket engine is compelling to me, for instance, and the welding and bending operations shown in the video are great but I would love to see more. The injector is being manufactured using 3d printing but we don’t get to see the process or much of the finished parts.
Running Kickstarter campaigns where backers are asked to contribute to a greater goal instead of preordering a new product can be tough. With six days left to go as of this writing Project Spartan Spear is still around $18,000 shy of their $25,000 goal. Funding ends on Friday, February 27, 2015 and a fully funded project will be fascinating to watch in the coming years.