82.1 F
San Fernando
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Rocket Engine Lands Facility

Making a nozzle for the RS-25 rocket engine is no easy feat, but engineers at Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc. believe the component could help power a jet to take humans to Mars – and beyond. At 10 feet tall and 7.5 feet in diameter at its widest point, the nozzle requires an even larger furnace to braze the stainless steel tube wall carrying the liquid hydrogen used to cool down the nozzle’s inner surface. The aerospace company has tackled that problem with a new 20,000-square-foot building at its Chatsworth campus housing a 22-foot-high electric furnace capable of heating to 2,000 degrees. John Schneider Jr., site manager, said the nozzle – the part that emits the flames during a launch – and the RS-25 engine it’s attached to will eventually contribute to human exploration of deep space. “If we were not going to Mars, this building and this furnace would not exist,” Schneider said. The rocket using the RS-25 – if it is ever built – would be the most powerful ever constructed and would carry a four-person capsule dubbed Orion. Both the engine and the capsule would be parts of NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS. For deep-space missions, the rocket will stand more than 380 feet tall, weigh 6.5 million pounds and carry a payload of 143 tons. The first test flight is scheduled to take place before November 2018. The first manned mission is scheduled for 2021. The 9.2 million pounds of thrust will be generated by four liquid hydrogen- and liquid oxygen-powered RS-25 engines. The 16 engines already supplied to NASA are undergoing testing at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, most recently in August. The next tests are scheduled for early next year. On Nov. 23, Aerojet Rocketdyne received a $1.2 billion contract from NASA to restart the production line of the RS-25 engine through 2024. NASA expects to spend $7 billion on all facets of its Space Launch System through 2018. There are estimates it ultimately will cost in the hundreds of billions to get a human to Mars, perhaps in 2035. Cost-effective space To prepare for building the RS-25 engines, Aerojet Rocketdyne built the brazing furnace and the building housing it, part of an 11-year, $140 million infrastructure project that also includes two new testing centers and improvements to offices for human resources and other administrative functions. The company undertook the renovations and additions to adapt to a changing government contracting market that demands safe, cost-effective rocket engines that can compete against upstarts like Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, in Hawthorne and Blue Origins, a Kent, Wash., space vehicle and rocket engine company launched by Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos. “This investment demonstrates our ongoing commitment toward innovation and the next generation of world-leading propulsion systems,” Aerojet Rocketdyne Chief Executive Eileen Drake said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Nov. 6. Aerojet Rocketdyne employs more than 1,000 workers at the Chatsworth campus. The company makes the RS-68 engine that power the Delta IV rockets taking military satellites into space. In addition to the development of the RS-25, the San Fernando Valley location also contributes to the new AR-1 engine proposed as the replacement for a Russian-made engine used on the Atlas V rocket for satellite launches, and is a subcontractor on the CST-100 space capsule being developed by Boeing Co. to take astronauts to the International Space Station. However, Greg Autry, an aerospace expert and assistant professor at the Marshall School of Business at USC, is skeptical about the long-term viability of the Space Launch System program for contractors such as Aerojet Rocketdyne. “There is certainly a risk that private-sector advocates will win or find out that the budget will not support a giant rocket that has no mission,” said Autry. Spaceworthy components The improvements to the Chatsworth facility were started when Rocketdyne was a part of Chicago’s Boeing. They were done in anticipation that the company’s larger campus at Victory Boulevard and Canoga Avenue in Canoga Park would eventually be closed and all manufacturing activity consolidated in Chatsworth. There had been 300,000 square feet of manufacturing space between the two locations as late as the 1990s, that has now been reduced to 100,000 square feet in Chatsworth. Boeing sold Rocketdyne to United Technologies Corp., in Hartford Conn., in 2005; the new owner in turn sold off the division in 2013 to GenCorp, near Sacramento. GenCorp changed its name to Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc. earlier this year. The manufacturing plant, called the Strategic Fabrication Center, is divided into areas based on skills, such as machining, welding, plating and heat treating and inspection. The setup is efficient in that, for example, if a part doesn’t pass inspection it can be easily remade in the machining area. Another area allows for rapid prototyping of ideas from engineers. It features three 3-D printers, or additive manufacturing machines, that build parts layer by layer from a powder. The machines lessen the time it takes to make complicated parts, Schneider said. “We can take parts from powder to finished product in two weeks,” he said. An 11,000-square-foot materials testing lab focuses on the metallic and nonmetallic materials used in the engine components to make sure they perform their intended use and endure for their expected lifespan. The lab employs five to six workers on average. “It is not always the busiest place, but it is what you need to support building a rocket engine,” Schneider said. Blast-door testing In the component test center, located in a separate building, finished parts are tested behind thick blast doors capable of withstanding millions of pounds of pressure. The spin test, for instance, uses 2,500 horsepower motors that spin the parts at up to 14,000 revolutions per minute. The water test, which uses two pumps and a 42,000 gallon pool, simulates how fluid runs through the parts in real-life conditions. “We are making sure the parts are doing what we want before we get them on a test stand,” Schneider said. Nearly all the equipment used in the manufacturing area, materials lab and component testing center came from the Canoga Park plant. But in other instances, such as the brazing furnace and the machines that lay on the nickel or gold plating for certain parts, acquiring brand-new, state-of-the-art equipment was preferred. The furnace was built by Consolidated Engineering Co. in Kennesaw, Ga., with engineering input from Aerojet Rocketdyne. Project Manager Patrick Gaunt said it is only the second brazing furnace Consolidated has built. “There was a lot that was specific for (Aerojet Rocketdyne),” Gaunt said. “It really is a unique, one-off piece of equipment.” Aerojet Rocketdyne officials are confident that the improvements in Chatsworth will support contracts coming the company’s way from the Space Launch System. “The growth the contract provides we’ll be able to handle right now,” Schneider said. The gearing up for a Mars mission comes as a new generation of space pioneers are providing competition to legacy rocket makers, including SpaceX and Blue Origins. USC’s Autry, however, considers SLS a pork-barrel project and there is no guarantee missions to Mars will ever take place. A “big spaceship” would likely be cut in budget fights. “The Obama administration is not committed to any destination,” Autry said. “There is no purpose (for SLS) other than to generate jobs in congressional districts.” He added that at one point he had expected SLS would resupply the International Space Station. But that’s a function that rockets from Space X and the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp., are already doing.

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Featured Articles

Related Articles