One Year of Wave Motion: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Yesterday, Wave Motion turned one year old! We’re not the best at keeping up our news section, but whether or not we get a chance to jot it down, we’re always up to something.

First, a look back at the last year. This time last year, our prototype jet-gun launcher was barely assembled and not even test fired for the first time. We didn’t have any examples of off-the-shelf electronics that survived our very “sudden” launch process. We weren’t as well-connected to the space industry, we didn’t have launch approval from the FAA, our business model was less developed, and we were just broke grad students with a heavy steel tube and a dream.

It took a lot of hard work, dedication, and every hour we could spare out of those 366 days (leap year!), but every hour was worth it. We did more than just build and test our launcher Big Iron; we refined our vision, built our business and gained new skills. Some of us are still grad students, and still kind of broke, but there’s no doubt that the experience has transformed us, into entrepreneurs and engineers dedicated to the mission of realizing cheap, frequent space launch for all mankind.  

Not everything was perfect. Part of testing is dealing with the unexpected, and a few unexpected blowouts from our pressure vessel led to unexpected slippage in our schedule, which led to us missing our launch attempt to the Karman line this year. Dealing with issues during build and design always ate up time. And of course, this was all against the backdrop of COVID, a grave worldwide tragedy that has touched everyone and everything negatively this year, including members of our team.

When we face tragedy that makes us resilient, and resilience is something any startup needs to succeed. The Wave Motion team remains undaunted and is taking this resilience with us to continue our operations into 2021.

During the next year, we’re pursuing:

-Use of our NSF I-Corps funds to attend industry events like the SpaceCom Entrepreneur Summit that we are attending this week and next

-The National Science Foundation’s Phase I SBIR after our successful project pitch was accepted

-A potential funding opportunity with the United States Navy

-Actual contract opportunities with private civil entities, not just research grants

-A plan for fundraising and expansion to widen our capabilities as a business

-A design campaign to adapt our launch technology to work in low to no atmosphere, to launch payloads from the Moon, Mars and beyond

-Continued space launch test activities with the goal of our first launch to the Karman line in 2021

(Not to mention, getting some of our founders the heck out of school to work on Wave Motion full time)

Here’s to Wave Motion, we’ve got a feeling that ’21 is gonna be a good year!