Firefly Space Systems Assets to be Auctioned on Thursday
The assets of Firefly Space Systems will be auctioned off on Thursday, March 16, in Menlo Park, Calif.
Notice of the auction has been posted by Development Specialists, Inc. There also is a classified advertisement in USA Today.
The company had been developing a small satellite launch vehicle before it suspended operations in September due to financial difficulties.
Virgin Galactic had launched litigation against Firefly co-founder Thomas Markusic, who had previously led Virgin’s effort to develop a competing launcher. Virgin claims that Markusic took intellectual property when he left the company in 2014.
10 responses to “Firefly Space Systems Assets to be Auctioned on Thursday”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Well that didn’t go very well, now did it…
Sometimes you eat the bear. Sometimes the bear eats you.
Man, I hope someone else makes an aerospike engine at some point… it’s such a bummer though, Firefly looked like one of the better small sat launcher companies.
Same.
i have to say that I was excited about that aerospike.
now to see what VG will do.
“Markusic Flu”: Leave one NewSpace company, start another in competition, get sued out of business over IP.
Saying nothing about the merits or lack thereof in this particular case, I hope this doesn’t become a trend. Compete on rockets, dammit, not lawyers. This industry is still far from large and thriving enough to shrug off such a significant additional drag on talent mobility and new company formation.
He did make several serious mistakes and pretty much invited VG to kick him in the balls…
Be careful out there, y’all.
The problem with launch start-ups has always been lack of funding. There has never been a shortage of people willing to work on the problem.
I sometimes wonder if Electron could combine their electric propellant pump and composite rocket technology with Firefly’s aerospike engine to create a better rocket. Both companies have good ideas. Perhaps it’s time to merge some of those ideas.