🌱 Bloom

Eco-friendly rocketry & disaster relief

Back in 2020 I got together with some friends from DARE to figure out if we can help the environment with rocketry. With recent news about the dangers of global soil erosion, especially in regions with already fragile infrastructure we wanted to know if we can build a system to distribute seeds for soil-fixing planets in difficult to access areas. Using safe and cheap rockets for this has the advantage that we can quickly disperse these seeds in a wide area that would be difficult to access with other methods. With this, we hoped, we can reduce the risk for follow-on mud or landslides which had been claiming an increasing number of lives. With this basic idea the 🌱 Bloom project was born which I was lucky to lead for a bit more than two years.

The Bloom team, from left to right; Yee, Quinten, Mark, Clio, Nick and me on the bottom.

Our team consisted of Mark, an absolute powerhouse of creative problem-solving and engineering knowledge, Nick who held our team together financially and the rocket engine structurally, Yee who not only safely tested our rocket motor design again and again, but also presented our project to the world, Clio making sure that our rocket was stable and aerodynamic enough to use in windy and rainy conditions, and last but not at all least the amazing Quinten who solved some of the most significant problems we faced, including how to seal a biodegradable rocket engine against some 20 bar of internal combustion products and a reliable, purely mechanical seed dispersal mechanism. Bloom would not exist without them, and they deserve all the praise for their passion and effort. Together we developed a full-biodegradable rocket (yes that means rocket motor and body, propellants etc.) and we were the first team to repeatedly demonstrate a full-biodegradable rocket motor in several hot-fire tests.

The basic mission schematic, turing barren soil to lush green and a test of the early seed-dispersal system which used a pyro-charge, together with the initial mission patch.
A 2015 map of natural disasters and loss events (image credit: Munich RE). Bloom addresses several aspects of meteorological events (green) and hydrological events (blue).
The greenest rocketry team on earth in their natural habitat, and Yee together with Quinten and our hydrostatic pressure test piece. Who would win, 1 mm wood sheet vs. 120 bar of pressure? The answer might surprise you.
The first ever hot fire of the Bloom engine. The left image shows the nominal operation (top) and a burn-through near the bulkhead (bottom). The burn through happened because of the fiber orientation of the bulkhead leading to a pocket of hot combustion products radially burning through the casing wall. This event can be also identified in the trust curve (right, bottom) and lead to a reduction of chamber pressure and early engine shut-down. I had to redact the performance of the rocket motor in the thrust curve, however we were very happy with the initial thrust level.

Dedicated to my amazing teammates.