TACFI Proposal for MAREVL-Booster

bluShift Aerospace Inc’s core technology, the Modular Adaptable Rocket Engine for Vehicle Launch (MAREVL), is a propulsion system ideally suited for use as a strap-on booster for small orbital Launch Vehicles (LVs) used by the Department of the Air Force (DAF). MAREVL offers operational advantages over solid rocket boosters, such as non-destructive flight termination and no need for munitions-rated storage, even with fuel loaded. It is also throttleable and does not require cryogenic propellants, which simplifies operations and improves safety. bluShift originally designed MAREVL for use in both commercial orbital launch vehicles tailored to nanosatellites and microsatellites, as well as in commercial suborbital launch vehicles for micro-gravity research customers. We have since prototyped the propulsion system at full-scale and are actively preparing to test the flight hardware in a 60s mission duty cycle test.  Integrating six ~100 kN MAREVL boosters could raise the payload mass to low Earth orbit (LEO) by 10% and to Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) by 20% for the DAF’s existing small launch vehicles, such as Firefly’s Alpha. For this proposed effort, bluShift seeks to prototype and test MAREVL-Booster to prepare it for use in clusters. The primary technical effort is developing booster specific requirements and designs, eventually leading to hot-fire testing with a focus on optimizing ignition timing and thrust-profile control.