Rocket startup lightens the load with additive manufacturing

The Challenge​

bluShift Aerospace, a Brunswick, Maine–based startup, is pioneering sustainable spaceflight with small payload rockets powered by anovel carbon-neutral biofuel. In the aerospace industry, every gram matters—each pound saved in structural mass creates room foradditional payload and potential revenue. One of bluShift’s critical components, the oxidizer valve body, connects the rocket’s liquidoxidizer to its solid biofuel. The part features a complex geometry and has traditionally been manufactured from multiple precision-machined pieces, requiring time-consuming assembly and fastening. The company needed a way to simplify this part while alsoreducing its weight.​

The Partnership​

To solve this challenge, bluShift partnered with Dr. Andrew Neils at the Roux Institute to pursue funding through the Maine Space Grant Consortium and NASA EPSCoR. Together with bluShift engineering leadership, Neils identified the oxidizer valve body as a prime candidate for redesign. Drawing on his background in materials science, Neils brought a structured approach to materials selection and design for additive manufacturing.The collaboration focused on replacing the traditionally machined, multi-piece valve body with a single, additively manufactured component optimized for performance, mass, and printability.​

The Outcome​

The team’s goal was to redesign the oxidizer valve body using generative design and additive manufacturing to reduce its weight and streamline manufacturing. The result was a consolidated component that reduced part count from 17 individual pieces to just one, eliminated fasteners, and cut more than 1.2 kilograms of weight. This design improvement represents an estimated $35,000 increase in payload revenue per launch, making it a powerful step toward more efficient, scalable launch systems.​