{"id":18769,"date":"2017-10-14T19:37:36","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T11:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/blastoff-for-3-d-printing-how-virgin-orbit-harnesses-high-tech-for-low-cost-rockets\/"},"modified":"2017-10-14T19:37:36","modified_gmt":"2017-10-14T11:37:36","slug":"blastoff-for-3-d-printing-how-virgin-orbit-harnesses-high-tech-for-low-cost-rockets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/blastoff-for-3-d-printing-how-virgin-orbit-harnesses-high-tech-for-low-cost-rockets\/","title":{"rendered":"Blastoff for 3-D printing: How Virgin Orbit harnesses high tech for low-cost rockets"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Virgin
Virgin Orbit\u2019s Scott Macklin leads a tour of the company\u2019s production facility in Long Beach, Calif. A full-size schematic of the LauncherOne rocket\u2019s upper stage is painted on the floor. (GeekWire Photo \/ Chelsey Ballarte)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LONG BEACH, Calif. \u2014 Virgin Orbit aims to blaze a trail on the final frontier, but in order to do that, it has had to push into new frontiers on the factory floor.<\/p>\n

Case in point: The Lasertec 4300 3D additive-subtractive hybrid machine that\u2019s turning out rocket parts at Virgin Orbit\u2019s 180,000-square-foot manufacturing facility here in Long Beach.<\/p>\n

Like a 3-D printer, the room-sized machine builds up a component from the ground up, using laser light to fuse metal powder into each layer. But along each step of the way, the part is fine-tuned by shaving off the excess bits.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is literally the first of its kind in operation with a commercial company,\u201d Andrew Duggleby, a manufacturing manager at Virgin Orbit, said as he worked on the combustion chamber for one of Virgin Orbit\u2019s Newton rocket engines.<\/p>\n

Virtually every company in the space business \u2014 including Aerojet Rocketdyne, Blue Origin, Planetary Resources and Tethers Unlimited in the Seattle area \u2014 is making use of additive manufacturing, also known as 3-D printing, to streamline the process of building rocket engines and spacecraft components.<\/p>\n

\"Hybrid
Virgin Orbit uses a hybrid machine tool to create parts for its Newton rocket engines. (Virgin Orbit Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

3-D printing techniques make it possible to build rapid prototypes for parts, as well as the parts themselves, reflecting designs that would take much more time and effort to execute using traditional milling machines.<\/p>\n

Scott Macklin, chief engineer for the company\u2019s LauncherOne Evolution team, said traditional manufacturing techniques might produce one complete combustion chamber in a year\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think that we can be generating a combustion chamber like this on the order of a month \u2026 an order of magnitude of reduction in time,\u201d Macklin told GeekWire during a recent visit.<\/p>\n

Time is of the essence for Virgin Orbit, which was spun off from Virgin Galactic in March. While Virgin Galactic and another sister venture, The Spaceship Company, are concentrating on developing the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane for suborbital passenger flights, Virgin Orbit is focusing on the LauncherOne system, which will send small satellites into orbit on rockets launched from a modified Boeing 747 jet.<\/p>\n

\"Virgin
The Virgin Orbit team, fronted by British billionaire Richard Branson, faces the camera at the company\u2019s factory in Long Beach, Calif., with a pathfinder version of the LauncherOne rocket behind them. (Virgin Orbit Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The jet, nicknamed Cosmic Girl, is undergoing flight tests in Long Beach as well at Virgin Galactic\u2019s home base in Mojave, Calif. Eventually, a huge pylon will be added to the airframe for carrying the rockets. Macklin said the system will run through a series of tests, starting with an empty rocket, then a rocket that carries water ballast to simulate the weight of a load of fuel, and then a fueled-up rocket.<\/p>\n

The first test launch is scheduled for the first half of 2018, and Macklin acknowledged that there\u2019s lots to do between now and then.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs much as you can test everything on the ground, there are some things that you just won\u2019t know until you get into flight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rocket engine development is proceeding in parallel. Virgin Orbit\u2019s LauncherOne rocket consists of two stages: The first stage powered by a NewtonThree engine capable of 73,500 pounds of thrust, and the second stage has a NewtonFour engine with 5,000 pounds of thrust. Both engines use RP-1 kerosene for fuel.<\/p>\n

Many of LauncherOne\u2019s components, including its cryogenic oxidizer tanks, are made of carbon composite material \u2014 which is another way in which Virgin Orbit is blazing a high-tech trail for orbital-class launch vehicles.<\/p>\n

\"LauncherOne\"
Virgin Orbit has built its first pathfinder LauncherOne rocket at its factory in Long Beach, Calif. (Virgin Orbit Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This summer, Virgin Orbit built its first pathfinder LauncherOne rocket for testing. A huge structure nicknamed the Pylon-a-Tron stands ready on the factory floor to gauge how the system will behave when the rocket is dropped from its mothership.<\/p>\n

Virgin Orbit says LauncherOne can put payloads weighing up to 660 pounds in orbit at a cost of $12 million to $15 million. There\u2019s already a long list of signed-up customers, ranging from NASA to the OneWeb, Cloud Constellation, Sitael and Sky and Space Global satellite ventures.<\/p>\n

The level of interest illustrates how rapidly the launch industry is changing, due to the push for lower-cost access to space as well as the rising capabilities of small satellites for communications and orbital imaging.<\/p>\n

Virgin Orbit\u2019s list of potential competitors is at least as long as its list of customers: Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stratolaunch, Vector Space Systems and a host of other companies are all angling for the small-satellite market.<\/p>\n

But Macklin, who came to Virgin Orbit from SpaceX, said he doesn\u2019t mind the competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI viewed SpaceX as this game changer. They lit the match and showed that this can be done,\u201d he said. \u201cBut as amazing as SpaceX is, it\u2019s still just one company, and as long as it\u2019s just one company, it could be written off as a fluke. It takes more to turn that match, that spark, into a fire.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Virgin Orbit\u2019s Scott Macklin leads a tour of the company\u2019s production facility in Long Beach, Calif. A full-size schematic of the LauncherOne rocket\u2019s upper stage is painted on the floor. (GeekWire Photo \/ Chelsey Ballarte) LONG BEACH, Calif. \u2014 Virgin Orbit aims to blaze a trail on the final frontier, but in order to do that, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1550,20,1551],"class_list":["post-18769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-launcherone","tag-satellite","tag-virgin-orbit"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}