Celebrate Independence Day by Buying a Rocket Test Facility
Employees celebrate the completion of Test Stand 1. (Credit: Firefly Space Systems)
Do you make rocket engines?
Do you need a place to test your rocket engines?
Are you free on July 4?
If you can answer yes to all these questions, then get yourself down to the Burnet County Courthouse in Texas next month. The last vestige of bankrupt Firefly Space Systems — its test facility north of Austin — will be auctioned off beginning at 10 a.m. on July 4.
No, that’s not a typo. Apparently, the county only does real estate foreclosure auctions on the first Tuesday of the month, whether it’s a national holiday or not.
The 199.9 acre property includes a test stand and other structures constructed by Firefly while the company was in operation.
Firefly had been developing the Alpha small-satellite booster, which would have used an aerospike engine. The company laid off all of its employees last September after suffering financial setbacks.
It later went bankrupt, with most of its assets being purchased at auction in March by EOS Launcher, Inc. EOS Launcher had obtained a $1 million promissory note Firefly had signed with Space Florida. It then foreclosed on the company.
According to the auction notice for the test site, EOS Launcher has since changed its name to Firefly Aerospace, Inc., which is registered in Delaware.
Ukrainian entrepreneur Maxym Polyakov, who made his fortune in online dating, is the man behind EOS Launcher/Firefly Aerospace. He has been pursuing the development of launch vehicles, satellites and ground stations for several years working with engineers in the United States and Ukraine.
11 responses to “Celebrate Independence Day by Buying a Rocket Test Facility”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
So… Is “Firefly Aerospace” is going to borrow Rocket Labs model and have a US Corporate “figurehead” headquarters for the front office, while all the rocket science and mfg is done in Ukraine?
Firefly is KAPUT!….Are you interested in buying up some of their hardware systems and property on July 4th?
Read the last two paragraphs. Again.
The test stand will probably get bought up by some old oil/cattle man neighbor who was annoyed by the noise. He’ll just bulldoze it over and turn it back into a pasture.
Probably the best use for it! Danged rockets, near as bad as those pesky railways for upsetting the cattle!
My guess, at the time, was that the previous “auction” was a Potemkin Village operation to put Firefly’s assets in the hands of EOS. That turned out to be true. This “auction” will go the same way and EOS will complete its takeover of the old Firefly and become the new Firefly. What happens after that is anyone’s guess. I’m not optimistic we’ll ever see anything resembling Firefly Alpha fly.
No of course not because that would be a serious ITAR PITA to accomplish. However you will probably see a Firefly “Beta” actually fly, even though it will bear an uncanny resemblance to the “Cyclone” launcher.
All Ukrainians look alike and are interchangeable. Gotcha.
wha…. ?
I think this has to be the dumbest post I’ve seen you make. To date anyway.
This is like thinking SpaceX are going to make an RSA-3 derivative because Musk is South African.
Which he probably could have done if he’d wanted to go that route.
Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin sent reps to the last auction. I’m not sure if they were observing or actually put in any bids.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the facility ends up in Firefly Aerospace’s possession in the end. Apparently it’s a good facility.