Philippine's First Rocket Company 'Orbitx' Joins the Race to Space With Biofuel: Seeks $2M Investment

Urian B., Tech Times 23 October 2020, 02:10 am

With NASA and SpaceX leading the space expeditions in the US, and other agencies all around the world from the UAE to Russia all joining together to forward humanities reach in space, a new player has hopes to join in the game.

What is known about the Philippine startup space company

Orbital Exploration Technologies is a startup that aims to be the Philippine's very first commercial spaceflight company. According to an article by SpaceTechAsia, the company is currently working on trying to develop its very own launch vehicles with a particular aim to provide an optimistic green, low-cost, and also sustainable launches.

This startup was founded by Dexter P. Bano Jr., who says he will create the space launch system that will be utilizing the power from renewable kerosene that is derived from certain waste plastics. It has already named this proprietary fuel a catchy "OrbitX RP-2", after the known refined kerosene RP-1 that was typically used in different rockets.

Orbital Exploration Technologies or OrbitX and how it wants to get to space

The OrbitX RP-2 is said to use the power of the OrbitX Haribon SLS-1, which is a suborbital two-stage rocket that could actually launch payloads reaching up to 200kg. This is what the startup aims to develop with the target launch date somewhere between 2023 and 2024. The rocket is also designed to be able to achieve a whopping 844kN of thrust, and is said to be at 12.02 meters high.

The known Orbital Exploration Technologies will be using its OrbitX Haribon SLS-1 with hopes of being able to conduct up to 6 different launches this year. Every single launch comes with a projected cost of up to $4.459 million, which the company states is 13% cheaper in comparison to the known Rocket Lab's Electron. The company has already secured an initial funding of up to $50,000 from different angel investors.

Orbital Exploration Technologies, a startup, looking for $2,000,000 investment

According to a website e27's startup section, the known Orbital Exploration Technologies or OrbitX is going to be the very first aerospace/rocket company to be located in the Philippines that is actually working on using fully-reusable as well as sustainable energy with the spacecraft called the Haribon powered by biofuel.

As a result of the startup's plans, OrbitX apparently received pre-seed funding coming from different generous investors and it was stated that they are also receiving a huge among ot support coming from the Science and Technology sector with the local Philippines' government (PHILSA and DOST), the academe (PUP), and also the media and the general public.

It was stated on their segment that they are looking for a total of up to $2,000,000 investment and for that amount, they can offer 10% equity of the known OrbitX as well as a board seat.

It was then stated that the capital will be used to hire experts, purchase the necessary equipment, upgrade their laboratories, as well as build Megafactories and also commercially produce as well as sell their very own biofuel.

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Written by Urian Buenconsejo