02/18/2025
Update: Prime Lightworks No Longer Active
Dear Followers of Prime Lightworks,
Unfortunately, it is my duty to inform you that Prime Lightworks is no longer active. Since its founding in 2015, the company had been pre-revenue while conducting research and development of novel space propulsion technology. In 2023, our fundraising campaign fell short of what was needed to continue long-term operations. While we operated for as long as possible with the fundraising available, including pivoting our business model when our initial proposed technology proved unfeasible, we are no longer able to continue working on the company.
When we set out to develop radio frequency resonant cavity thrusters for satellite propulsion, we knew we were in for a challenge. The technology had shown promising results from thrust measurements at NASA Eagleworks, but there was skepticism about whether these results were based on measurement interference. To investigate this phenomenon, we applied our expertise in electromagnetic compatibility and radio frequency engineering to determine whether or not this potentially revolutionary space propulsion technology was practically feasible.
Ultimately, we built a prototype propulsion system consisting of a 50 watt X-Band RF electronics subsystem powering a resonant cavity that achieved upwards of 10^6 quality factor. We integrated this prototype on a torsion pendulum in a vacuum chamber, and produced thrust measurements approaching 1 micronewton per watt. However, we discovered that encasing the electronics subsystem in magnetic shielding dramatically reduced the thrust measurements, indicating they were a false positive caused by magnetic torque with Earth’s magnetic field.
While we believe superconducting radio frequency resonant cavity thrusters should still be investigated, producing an advanced prototype of that nature would likely require at least an order of magnitude more funding than we had at our disposal. When it became clear that the thrusters we had built would not produce thrust that could compete within satellite propulsion markets, we attempted to pivot the business to renewable hydrogen rocket engine technology, and it was around this time that our fundraising campaign fell short.
Despite not taking any wages from the company since December 2021 to extend our runway, and making a loan to the company to see us through our fundraising launch in 2023, I worked on Prime Lightworks as long as I possibly could because I have always believed in our mission, that the future of propulsion can be renewable and sustainable.
Moving forward, I have had to seek employment elsewhere, while the legal and financial representatives of Prime Lightworks will evaluate and file the relevant paperwork to render the company inactive. It is with a heavy heart that I have to move on from the work that occupied my spirit for nearly a decade.
My deepest thanks are in order to everyone who has supported Prime Lightworks, our investors, employees, contractors, interns, partners including Y Combinator, Greentown Labs, Cleantech Open, Starburst Accelerator, StartEngine and TechPlace, and especially to everyone, especially our friends and family, who were there for us while attempting to do the impossible.
