SBIR Phase II: Liquid Oxygen (LOX) - Methane Engine for Small Satellite Launch Vehicles

SBIR 第二阶段：液氧 (LOX) - 小型卫星运载火箭的甲烷发动机

• 批准号: 2303613
• 负责人: Maksud Ismailov
• 金额: $ 100万
• 依托单位: ROCKET PROPULSION SYSTEMS LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2303613&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; Liquid; Oxygen

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to create a rocket engine manufacturing business that would supply off-the-shelf, inexpensive, and reusable engines for current and future civilian and military rocket builders that want to launch small payloads to space. There are currently only two established companies that offer large engines exclusively to other big companies or military at production cost of over $1 million. A growing number of startups wish to build and launch small rockets to space to provide climate sensing, secure U.S. space infrastructure, and accelerate global trade by precision tracking of transportation fleets to prevent costly delays and accidents. In many cases, however, companies needing access to space cannot acquire the required engines either because they are too costly or heavy for these goals. The proposed innovation will close this gap by offering a lightweight rocket engine at a ten-fold lower unit production cost. The production of these engines will advance manufacturing and the technical workforce, increase economic competitiveness, and support the U.S. national defense.This SBIR Phase II project proposes to conduct hot-fire testing of the rocket engine prototype built in Phase I with the goal of demonstrating performance, reliability, reusability, and scalability to future higher thrust levels for this engine. The work will demonstrate and improve engine performance at low/high power levels and propellant mixture ratios enabling iterations to higher performance. This testing will proceed with the combustion devices tested first (thrust chamber assembly and pre-burner), followed by powerpack (pre-burner + turbopump) testing, and full integrated engine testing. This testing and research and development will lead to improvements in part-level geometry and the underlying analytical and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) non-reacting and reacting models, including chemical reaction mechanisms in CFD models, to achieve required component-level performance in terms of pressure losses/rises and combustion temperatures.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）II阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是创建火箭发动机制造业务，该业务将为当前和未来的平民和军事火箭建筑商提供现成，廉价和可重复使用的发动机，他们希望为太空推出小有效载荷。 目前，只有两家成熟的公司专门为其他大公司或军事公司提供大型发动机，生产成本超过100万美元。 越来越多的初创公司希望通过精确跟踪运输机队来防止昂贵的延误和事故来建造和发射小型火箭以提供气候感知，安全的美国太空基础设施以及加速全球贸易。 但是，在许多情况下，需要访问太空的公司无法获取所需的引擎，因为它们太昂贵或沉重。 拟议的创新将通过提供轻巧的火箭发动机以低10倍的生产成本来缩小这一差距。 这些发动机的生产将促进制造业和技术劳动力，提高经济竞争力并支持美国国民防御。该SBIR II阶段项目建议对I阶段I建造的火箭发动机原型进行热火测试，目的是展示性能，可靠性，可重复性和可伸缩性，以使该发动机未来更高的冲刺水平。这项工作将在低/高功率水平和推进剂混合物比率上展示和改善发动机性能，从而迭代更高的性能。该测试将首先进行测试的燃烧设备（推室组件和预燃烧器），然后进行PowerPack（预燃烧器 +涡轮机）测试，以及完整的集成发动机测试。 这种测试，研究和开发将导致部分级别的几何形状以及基本的分析和计算流体动态（CFD）非反应和反应模型，包括CFD模型中的化学反应机制，以实现所需的组件级别，以通过压力损失和燃烧性奖励来实现所需的组成级别。智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准。