SIRITH Space
Technical Due Diligence
How do you validate a design and ensure production consistency?
We separate validation into three stages: initial design testing, production quality control and final customer acceptance.
For initial design testing, our working estimates are around two weeks per design-test cycle and 6–8 weeks for a major development programme. Faster iterations are central to this approach, alongside our 10-day design-to-delivery target.
Our production quality-control approach includes CT scanning to inspect motors. Where required, final vehicle testing and batch acceptance take place with the customer after delivery.
Moving towards more iterative development depends on demonstrating consistent performance and building trust with customers over time.
How will motors handle long-term storage, rough handling and environmental conditions?
Our approach uses established composite propellant systems as its material baseline. Mechanical resilience and performance under temperature cycling are important reasons for that choice.
Material selection is the starting point. Production controls and validation must also demonstrate that the finished motor meets the customer’s storage, handling and environmental requirements.
What is the market opportunity, and how will you respond as demand changes?
We are focused first on low-volume European customers. We then scale to fulfil our LOIs and expand into the European and US markets, serving research, commercial space and defence programmes.
The benefit we are building goes beyond speed. Flexible production capacity and commercial printer platforms are intended to let us respond to changing customer requirements without rebuilding a dedicated production line for every new order.
We want to scale production up or down as demand changes, while retaining the ability to deliver custom motors.
How do you compare with Firehawk, and how do you see the market evolving?
Firehawk is addressing a similar problem, and we see value in having multiple manufacturers developing new approaches to rocket motor production.
Our focus is the complete design-to-doorstep loop: automated design, flexible manufacture and test data feeding the next iteration. The delivery comparison is 4–8 months for Firehawk, alongside SIRITH’s 10-day design-to-delivery target.
Europe also needs sovereign production capacity. We see room to build our customer relationships and manufacturing presence in the UK and Europe as the wider market develops.
Why use FDM rather than SLA printing?
Our approach is built around readily available commercial FDM printers. We favour a simple equipment platform that can support the manufacturing process without introducing unnecessary complexity.
Commercial equipment also gives us a practical route to adding capacity: more printer units, rather than a separate bespoke production system for each expansion.
Why print the mould and propellant concurrently rather than as two separate processes?
A separate process might save some time, but it would require an additional production line and introduce more handoffs and opportunities for human error.
Our integrated approach is intended to keep quality control within the manufacturing process, including inspection as the build progresses. We value that control and repeatability over a small reduction in processing time.
Because the platform uses commercial printers, adding capacity is part of the scaling strategy. The aim is to improve throughput while preserving the manufacturing controls.