Relativity Space Begins Test Campaign on their New Engine
Relativity Space announced this week that it had hot-fired its new methane-fueled, 3D-printed, Aeon R engine, the power source for its next-generation Terran R rocket. It was a 10 second burn at NASA's Stennis Space Center that only reached 70% of rated thrust, but marks the beginning of a test campaign. At a design thrust of just over 1/4 million pounds - they claim 258,000 lbs - that's 180,000 lbs of thrust in this test.
Relativity Space provided video on YouTube.
HUGE ... Tim Ellis, Relativity's co-founder and CEO, posted on the social platform X this test was a "HUGE milestone" for the privately held company. The Aeon R has 11 times more thrust than the Aeon 1 engine that flew on the company's now-discontinued Terran 1 launcher. Thirteen of these methane/liquid oxygen Aeon R engines will power the Terran R's reusable first-stage booster, and a single vacuum-rated variant of the Aeon will fly on the Terran R's second stage. Relativity aims to launch the Terran R for the first time in 2026.
The Terran R will produce over 3.3 million pounds of thrust, putting it between the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy in that category.
Polaris Dawn Slipping to NET April '24
I've been following and posting about this mission since they first started talking about it, and the most recent post about launch date I find is saying it would be No Earlier Than March of '22, and that was a delay. Space News reports that the launch is now scheduled for April '24.
In social media posts Dec. 9, Jared Isaacman, the billionaire backing the Polaris program and who is commanding the initial mission, said the launch of Polaris Dawn is now scheduled for April 2024.
“April is the goal to launch & the pace of training is accelerating,” he wrote, stating that he was at SpaceX that day for testing of extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits that will be used on the mission.
This mission is going to be the first spacewalk by a privately run space corporations rather than government-run, and I get the impression reading Isaacman's descriptions that perhaps they or SpaceX underestimated the efforts required. Doing a spacewalk meant designing suits capable of being exposed to a hard vacuum for a long time, and but it also led to some redesign of the Crew Dragon capsule.
There is a “big difference,” he wrote, between the pressure suits worn by Crew Dragon astronauts and an EVA suit “engineered from the start to be exposed to vacuum outside the spaceship.” The lack of an airlock also requires changes to Crew Dragon software and hardware to enable depressurization of the cabin before the start of the spacewalk and repressurization afterwards.
Other issues he identified include demonstrating intersatellite laser communications links between the Crew Dragon spacecraft and SpaceX’s Starlink constellation as well as testing electronics for the higher radiation environment on the Polaris Dawn mission. The Crew Dragon will fly an orbit that will take it to altitudes of up to 1,400 kilometers, far higher than previous Crew Dragon missions and one that brings it close to the inner edge of the Van Allen Belt.
Because of that last factor, I've read elsewhere that it led to re-examining the avionics boxes on the Crew Dragon to ensure they could survive the expected radiation environment, not just things the crew might be wearing and carrying out of the capsule.
“It’s a development program with ambitious objectives. Schedule slips should be expected,” Isaacman wrote Dec. 9.
Polaris Dawn crew, (L-R) Anna Menon, Mission Specialist & Medical Officer;
Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Pilot; Jared “Rook” Isaacman; Sarah Gillis, Mission
Specialist. Isaccman and Poteet are both executives at Shift4 as well as
extremely qualified pilots; Gillis and Menon are both engineers with SpaceX on
the manned spaceflight side. More detailed biographies on the four
at the bottom of the mission page.
> methane-fueled, 3D-printed
ReplyDeleteCopenhagen Suborbitals is crowdfunding a recreation of the manned Mercury program, and own their sea launch platforms. Government be all nervous about homemade low-pressure portions of rifles; instead it should be panicked about ICBMs 3D-printed by groups of 100 headcount. Due to economies of scale, technological innovation gives more military advantage to small groups than large ones. Therefore, the technological singularity will produce a liberty singularity, because every tiny group will be able to MAD larger predatory ones.
We taking bets for how long until some chan becomes a nuclear power? Or has a nuclear-powered laser, which happens to be a rocket drive with the best exit velocity, but also teaches the Kzinti lesson?
ISTM that the fundamental issue there is 3D printing metal, which is still out of the reach of hobbyists. While I haven't checked in a while, I'm sure prices are still easing down, but progress would be 100x the price of a plastic printer. A decent beginner's printer is now in the 100 to $200 range, and the last time I saw some prices, metal printers were in the 10k to $100k range. Even those are far too small to print something like you're talking about.
DeleteFor small things, yeah, you can print a model in plastic and then "lost plastic" cast it, but that's size restricted so you're not casting an ICBM. Even after something like a $100k Laser Sintered Metal printer, you're not done. Metals generally are heat treated and sometimes finished. Although you can easily see the printed layers on Relativity's Terran 1 booster.
Which comes first: global socioeconomic collapse or technological improvement to the level needed? You got me.
I'll take Global Socioeconomic Collapse for $500, SiG.
DeleteFascinating. I had not been following Polaris Dawn. If they actually make new EVA suits, that will be huge of itself. The new comms method to Starlink would be great too. If the program slips more, would it be reasonable to switch the comms project to another program? Whatever happens, hoping for the best for Polaris Dawn, SpaceX and Relativity Space. Thank you SiGraybeard for keeping up with all of this.
ReplyDeleteFrom an older post:
Delete"NASA had been working to develop a new EVA suit since 2007 and "With $420M spent and another $625M expected, suits won't be "ready for flight until April 2025 at the earliest."
2007 to 2025? Eighteen years and over a billion dollars to develop a suit?
SpaceX started working on these suits in August '21. If they fly in April '24, that's less than three years compared to 18. No data on cost but it has to be less.
SiG, never underestimate the grift and graft of The Old Space Guard. I'm surprised NASA is working closely with SpaceX and Isaacman, etc., to Git-er-done with regards to Extravehicular suits, shoulda been done ages ago.
DeleteIn 2009, all the previous administration's projects, including the ARES system and new EVA suits, were shelved by the incoming administration.
DeleteThen the new administration waited 3-4 years before restarting 'manned spaceflight' and that's how we got SLS and no new EVA suits till 2025 or later.
That's part of the problem. A presidential administration can okay plans that then get shot down by the next administration.
It's one of the things that Trump did very well, he kept the existing plans, as bad as they were, running in order to continue continuity.
Having to redo everything every 4-8 years has cost the nation a lot of money, time and resources.
Funny, I am currently watching the anime "Space Brothers" where they are using the ARES system... in 2025.
NASA has already experienced a catastrophic space suit fire (in a test lab on the ground) and understands what would happen if such were to occur whist the suit was occupied or on a spacecraft.
DeleteOne would hope that such information is not held exclusively by them, and that other engineers would know that or deduce the probabilities. Like that a pure oxygen environment has some dangers - as in Apollo 1.
DeletePublicly available here:
Deletehttps://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-engineering/space-suit-design/spacesuit-fire-nasa-refuses-forget/
When NASA astronauts return to the moon, they will be able to resupply from all the fine Chinese restaurants.
ReplyDeleteThese hobbyists: copenhagensuborbitals.com are building a manned rocket. During Apollo manned rockets took a national-sized effort, but tech growth enabled Elon to get results with 1,200 employees. Soon that will shrink to 120 employees, for people who merely want to build a copy; the same way as you can recompile an entire Linux distribution by following a web page recipe for Gentoo, without having to have produced any of the original work.
I've had a tour of a high-end laser sintering metal printer, which is currently loaded with Stainless Steel powder, but can also do Titanium. Build volume of around a cubic foot. Four large bottles of Argon strapped to the wall, and low Oxygen alarms in every room. First step in post-processing of the print is to send it off to be EDM wire cut off the build plate.
> Which comes first: global socioeconomic collapse or technological improvement to the level needed? You got me.
Horror is the literary genre where rational thought doesn't work; SciFi is the genre where it does. But these writing styles are distorted mirrors; in actual physical reality rational thought always works.
Let's take an inventory: There is no thing (dinosaur asteroid strike, supervolcano, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, The Matrix's extraterrestrials, or Greta) which blots out the sun with clouds and breaks photosynthesis. The fossil fuels are still in the ground in huge quantities. There is no plague germ or insect for humans or food crops. Nobody burned the libraries of books or killed the practitioners knowing how to transform petroleum into electricity. The only thing threatening human flourishing is human-made government.
What is about to collapse is not the global economy of humans working to produce goods and services supporting their lifestyle, but the separate group of humans calling themselves governments, which is kings trying to turn the middle class back into serfs.