A new venture is seeking design ideas for 3D printed rocket engines for small payload deliveries into low-Earth orbit and it's banking on DIYers all over the globe to provide them.

Private spaceflight company DIYRockets and collaborative design platform developer Sunglass on Friday launched an online competition called the 3D Rocket Engine Design Challenge "to make space design open and collaborative." Registration opened at this year's SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, the two companies said.

The competition will be judged by inventor Dean Kamen, NASA space researcher and author Angelo Vermeulen, and a panel of industry experts. The top two winning designs will be printed via $500 contributions from 3D printing marketplace and community Shapeways.com.

"We are excited to be working with Sunglass and Shapeways to harness the power of open sourcing, 3D printing, and collaboration in the cloud, which will aid our efforts to rapidly advance space exploration," Darlene Damm, co-founder and co-president of DIYRockets, said in a statement. "As NASA's push towards private and public innovation finally comes to fruition and technology is now more affordable than ever, we see this as a greenfield opportunity to truly redefine space design and technology."

Design teams will be able to leverage Sunglass's cloud-based collaboration platform to dream up and realize their ideas for a printable booster engine with submissions using a variety of 3D design software optionsincluding SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor, Rhino, and CATIAall permissible for the contest.

Describing the venture as a means to "disrupt the space transportation industry," the partnering companies said the rocket design contest would be the "first of many competitions that encourages the fusion of creativity, technology, and collaboration by people across the globe."

The 3D Rocket Engine Design Challenge and future contests sponsored by DIYRockets are intended to "dramatically drive down design costs, while creating innovative technology for all types of space hardware and parts, ranging from space propulsion to space medical sensors," Damm said.

Sunglass co-founder Nitin Rao said the platform developer was hoping to "see a preview of the incredible impact that 3D printing and cloud collaboration will have in advancing aerospace technology."

You can sign up for the 3D Rocket Engine Design Challenge at the contest's dedicated registration page.

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