Isar Aerospace

[ParabolicSnark]

A 2021 launch is also a lot to ask for a company that's only done a gas generator and a turbine test. They need to complete their turbopump, hotfire a chamber, integrate those two, and then run the complete engine with the stage. On top of that, there's permitting issues they need to resolve. Perhaps someone more familiar with European launch regulations can chime in on how they compare to NASA/AF/FAA/range qualification.

Not a European expert but just looking at what others have done, like Rocket Lab, Firefly and Virgin, that date is laughable from this early status.

I think Firefly is the best comparison here. Rocket Lab had a lot of experience with sounding rockets so they had opportunities to get avionics, GNC, and facilities setup to support and potentially expedite their development timeline. Virgin on the other hand had botched management with the number of configurations pursued in the beginning (ALASA, WhiteKnightTwo, NewtonOne, NewtonTwo) and a moving goal post on launch criteria when Dan Hart came on board. I think 3-5 year turn around is the goal where 3 is attainable by a dead-simple or derivative design and most new companies will land around the 5-year mark. That puts Isar launching probably closer to 2023.

[Bananas_on_Mars]

That's a lot of employees for their stage in development and establishes a high burn rate. 100 people is probably in the neighborhood of $25-30M/year. Assuming a linear ramp during that year, you can cut that in half for Dec-2019 through Dec-2020 which matches well with their goal for another funding round this year.

I wouldn‘t expect their expenditures for personnel to be that high. It‘s about 100k € for a young engineer/year including overhead costs.

I don’t know how much technology transfer there is between TUM and Isar Aerospace. Since Isar Aerospace somehow is a spin-off from TUM and they have access to that knowledge base, they might have more of a head start than currently attributed to them.

There‘s also a competition for a german smallsat launcher by DLR for a total price money of 25 mio. € where they are one of the competitors.

[playadelmars]

I wonder how much talent quality matters to speed of execution IE early SpaceX was able to hire the very best people anywhere that wanted to work on commercial space launch. Does that same talent pool and drive exist in Europe? I imagine it has to, but curious if that affects possible timelines at all vs the US.

[ParabolicSnark]

I wouldn‘t expect their expenditures for personnel to be that high. It‘s about 100k € for a young engineer/year including overhead costs.

My burn rate estimate included hardware costs, which tends to track reasonably well with head count.

[SciNews]

"Start-up begins rocket production: German start-up Isar Aerospace kicked off production on Monday with ambitions to send a 27-metre-long rocket into orbit next year." https://www.deutschland.de/en/news/start-up-begins-rocket-production
Thread about the spaceport in the North Sea https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51894.0

[ParabolicSnark]

New article about Isar on Sueddeutsche Zeritung (South Germany Newspaper).

A competition organized by the German Aerospace Center shows how important politicians rate the development of German small rockets. The jury is chaired by Thomas Jarzombek, the German government's space coordinator. A total of 25 million euros have been awarded to two start-ups in particular for developing and qualifying their rockets.

Jarzombek even called for more money to be given to start-ups in the budget negotiations at the ESA Ministerial Conference in 2022 than to invest another million euros in the further development of the large European Ariane launcher . "We don't need Ariane 7".

Seems like there's a lot of political pressure in Germany to foster the new space environment. Isar is most notable, but they made mention of Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse, neither of which I've heard of before.

Edit: Rocket Factory Augsburg thread, HyImpulse thread

Isar Aerospace has 100 employees, which are to be increased to 160 in 2021.

With where they're at, they seem to be ramping faster than Relativity.

[Pueo]

Surprised this wasn't posted here when it came out: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/a-german-rocket-startup-seeks-to-disrupt-the-european-launch-industry/

Probably the most significant part is the confirmation that Isar intends to use propane/lox as their fuel choice. 
The business case as described by the article seems to be: be the cheapest European option for customers who don't want to go to Russia / US / India and use significant German government support to get to that point.

I'm a big fan of using cryogenic propane, I think its high density when sub-cooled, low coking properties, and higher ISP than RP-1 make propane an ideal choice if one had to build a clean sheet small-medium lift partially-reusable launch vehicle.

[Asteroza]

I'm a big fan of using cryogenic propane, I think its high density when sub-cooled, low coking properties, and higher ISP than RP-1 make propane an ideal choice if one had to build a clean sheet small-medium lift partially-reusable launch vehicle.

Wasn't HMXHMX always saying if he had another go at it, he would pick LOx/Propane?

Seems like there's a lot of political pressure in Germany to foster the new space environment. Isar is most notable, but they made mention of Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse, neither of which I've heard of before.

Would this suggest Germany is hedging against EU/ESA problems?

[Pueo]

I'm a big fan of using cryogenic propane, I think its high density when sub-cooled, low coking properties, and higher ISP than RP-1 make propane an ideal choice if one had to build a clean sheet small-medium lift partially-reusable launch vehicle.

Wasn't HMXHMX always saying if he had another go at it, he would pick LOx/Propane?

Seems like there's a lot of political pressure in Germany to foster the new space environment. Isar is most notable, but they made mention of Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse, neither of which I've heard of before.

Would this suggest Germany is hedging against EU/ESA problems?

Unfortunately I'm a relative newcomer to the forum, what's HMXHMX's background?

Germany has a long history of pursuing export-led growth through generous subsidies to high value added industries, often to the chagrin of its EU neighbors.  Launching a foreign company's satellite from Germany is an export, specifically a mode 2 service export.  Now that there appears to be an exploding commercial new-space market it's practically second nature for Germany to subsidize small launch companies in the hopes of capturing launch services exports.

[Steven Pietrobon]

Unfortunately I'm a relative newcomer to the forum, what's HMXHMX's background?

https://flight.nasa.gov/events/tgir/2001/session_speakers/hudson2.htm

[CorvusCorax]

crosspost:  plan for a polar launch corridor over the north sea - using ship based sea-launches

https://www.heise.de/news/Bundesregierung-prueft-Konzept-fuer-Raketenstartplatz-in-der-Nordsee-4932590.html

[Balticskipper]

it seems likely that they will launch from Esrange in Northern Sweden, it looks like they will test their engines there and it is the only launch site in the EU. ceeping all their operation with in the EU would simplify logistics (no need to get groundcrews visas, and within the same customs union ect) and they can ship things there by truck or rail.

Sweden have launched sounding rockets from Esrange since the 60s and they have gotten approval to launch orbital rockets from 2022.

https://www.sscspace.com/ssc-to-launch-satellites-esrange-space-center/

[MiqBos]

They want to launch from Kourou: https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Isar_Aerospace_prepares_the_launch_of_its_rockets_from_space_centre_CSG_999.html

They also posted a render video:

[Mighty-T]

Great news!

https://twitter.com/isaraerospace/status/1336571091804938240

[gmbnz]

https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/08/germanys-isar-aerospace-raises-91m-to-get-its-satellite-launch-vehicle-off-the-ground/

Isar Aerospace, which is building a micro-satellite launcher significantly smaller and thus lower in price than bigger launchers on the market today, has picked up €75 million ($91 million) in funding. It plans to use the money to continue its research, development and production en route to its first commercial launches, planned for early 2022.
The round, a Series B, is being led by Lakestar,  with previous backers Earlybird and Vsquared Ventures also contributing significantly, the company said. Earlybird and strategic backer Airbus Ventures led Isar’s previous round of $17 million in December 2019.

That's quite a bit of money and should see them well through development - with a pinch maybe to first launch (but I'd expect they'll probably need a topup)
And it comes basically a year after their $17m round, so presumably they've made good progress in that time.

Ever since OHB came on the scene with RFA I assumed they would be the first European small launch vehicle... but perhaps I'm wrong.

Comparing to Rocket Lab (assuming crunchbase is correct), RL had a $75m D series in early 2017 just a few months before their first launch.

_{https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/rocket-lab/company_financials}

[J-B]

https://spacenews.com/isar-aerospace-beat-out-competitors-to-win-dlr-microlauncher-competition/


Isar Aerospace has won the first of two main rounds of the DLR microlauncher competition beating out Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse Technologies. Isar Aerospace wins 11 millions d'€.

[TorenAltair]

Just in German news: Porsche buys a single digit share of Isar Aerospace.

[trimeta]

Just in German news: Porsche buys a single digit share of Isar Aerospace.

A total of $75 million in this round of funding, bringing their total to date up to $180 million.

[ringsider]

Just in German news: Porsche buys a single digit share of Isar Aerospace.

A total of $75 million in this round of funding, bringing their total to date up to $180 million.

Isar Aerospace seem to be focusing on a German-centric consortium of investors / industrials, which is an interesting development in Europe with all the French and Italian interests (Italian in particular in 1-2 ton light launch class).

But Germany hasn't had a launch site since either WW2, or perhaps the OTRAG-era in Zaire, has it? Also, do they have a legal framework today to allow a German rocket to be licensed to launch, apart from the standard (minimalist) UN OST adherence everybody has?

Just reading around it seems like the founders came straight out of building small model rockets at the University of Munich, founding the company in March 2018. They seem to be on a similar track to Relativity Space in terms a) founder background,  b) scale of vehicle, c) fluffy lets-go-Mars-and-build-a-city high-concept marketing, d) high-visibility investors e) financing and lofty valuations etc., but at least Jordan Noone and Tim Ellis had done some work at Masten and Blue Origin prior to founding Relativity. 

$180m is a decent amount of money. However, the lesson from Virgin Orbit, ABL, Astra, Firefly, Relativity et al is they will need a large amount more and a decently long amount of time to complete a rocket intended to carry 1,000kg to orbit, and they started very late compared to those five (VO was circa 2015 as part of SC/Galactic, Astra 2016 coming out of Ventions, Firefly January 2014 originally, Relativity 2015, ABL 2017 - and only the first 2 have launched to date). Have Isar Aerospace actually done anything significant in the 3.5 years since founding e.g. built any significant hardware like engines, tanks, guidance systems, or has it been mostly hiring and buying stuff?

On the surface it looks a little like another German firm, Lilium, which was also founded by students, which also raised a lot of money behind a big idea, but has struggled to deliver the technology so far.

[trimeta]

But Germany hasn't had a launch site since either WW2, or perhaps the OTRAG-era in Zaire, has it? Also, do they have a legal framework today to allow a German rocket to be licensed to launch, apart from the standard (minimalist) UN OST adherence everybody has?

For what it's worth, Isar plans to launch from Andøya Space Center in Norway, not from German soil. Since Andøya has hosted suborbital launches for decades, I'd think they'd be in a good place to understand the licensing requirements necessary to upgrade to orbital services.