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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

ROCKETS—Rocketdyne Is Banking on Newest Space Age Engine

More than 40 years after the Canoga Park-based Rocketdyne Division of Boeing North American, Inc. developed the engine for the rocket that launched America’s first satellite into space, engineers are again busy with what could be a precursor to the next generation of space travel. “Depending on how this works out, we could be seeing an example of the kind of craft that could eventually replace the Space Shuttle,” said Dom Amatore, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In a cooperative effort with NASA and Lockheed Martin Corp., Rocketdyne is back at the forefront of the nation’s space program with development of the X-33 unmanned launch vehicle. Building on the legacy of its mammoth first-stage engines for the Saturn V rocket and, later, the main engines of the Space Shuttle, Rocketdyne is developing the engines that would eventually power future versions of the shuttle and other space vehicles. Like a number of aerospace firms that struggled in the 1980s and 1990s with dwindling federal contracts, Rocketdyne has seen its space activities slow through much of the same period. Revenues for Rocketdyne and its sister communications unit hovered around the $6.8 billion mark in 1998 and 1999, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Those figures could increase if NASA agrees to additional funding for the X-33 later this year, even though company officials have yet to submit a formal proposal. If testing with the spacecraft is successful, NASA could give the go-ahead for additional full-scale versions of the Aerospike Engine, potentially meaning hundreds of millions of dollars to the company. But with the advent of the International Space Station which has a Rocketdyne-built power plant the X-33 and other rocket engine development programs, the company has rebounded from its stagnant period and is poised to again take the lead in space-related technology. “This is going to do something that no space vehicle has ever done,” said Dan Beck, Rocketdyne public relations manager, referring to the X-33. “It’s going to take off single stage with no boosters or anything like that. It’s going to reach a suborbit and, 15 minutes after (take-off), it’s going to land in Utah and then they’re going to turn it around and do it again.” Such are the goals for the experimental half-scale X-33 rocket, an unmanned wedge-shaped rocket scheduled for launch in 2003. The diminutive winged vehicle would be launched from Edwards Air Force Base, reaching up to 60 miles in altitude before returning to earth and landing like an airplane. New era in space travel Rocketdyne is banking on its new XRS 2200 Linear Aerospike Engine to power the craft and eventually a full-scale version of the launch vehicle to help the U.S. compete in the satellite launching business. “We hope that if this program is successful it will make us more competitive in the world launching market,” NASA’s Amatore said. The space agency hopes to reduce its costs for launching a payload into space from $10,000 per pound to $1,000, with an eventual goal of reducing it to $100 per pound. But that figure is a long way off, officials admit. According to NASA, satellite launches and related services both public and private sector cost $9 billion in 1996 and is projected to cost $29 billion in 2000. In recent years, European and Russian companies have provided stiff competition to U.S. firms launching satellites (with revenues of about $1.43 billion in 1998), forcing NASA officials to develop a cheaper, more reliable substitute for the aging Delta and Atlas rockets. The European Space Agency cornered more than a third of the $4.3 billion launch market in 1998, followed by the U.S. and Russia, according to one study. But by the late 1990s, satellite launches became less frequent and the competition cooled. Still, the Europeans retain what lead there is to have. Banking on a so-called reusable rocket, NASA hopes to eventually replace its existing single-use, multi-stage rockets with a reusable rocket that takes off from a launch site and lands like an airplane that can be refueled and readied for launch within three days. The idea was revived when NASA proposed the $1.2 billion X-33 project. Today, $210 million in development costs and scores of man-hours in design, development and testing later, the engine will be ready for delivery this summer.

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