NASA’s planned return to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization is currently underway and driving a new era in commercial spaceflight. But a lot has changed since humanity last visited the aboard Apollo 17 fifty years ago.
Today, new technologies exist to drive down propulsion cost, speed up schedules, and improve performance. The availability of powerful computers to assist with design and simulation and advanced additive manufacturing (AM) to enable new part geometries offers engineers a chance to innovate without compromise and propel humanity’s ambitions for space exploration beyond the limits currently achievable with traditional manufacturing techniques and incumbent technologies.
In our latest webinar, How a New Quad Injector Helped ‘Unlock the Code’ for Propulsion Innovation, we chatted with James Horton, Aerospace Engineer and Mission Architect at Aerojet Rocketdyne, Ethan Clare, Customer Success, at nTopology, and Velo3D Technical Sales Engineer Gene Miller about how advancements in design software from nTopology, combined with the improvements in manufacturing from Velo3D, helped Aerojet Rocketdyne set a new benchmark for their deep-space combustion design.
The company’s quad-directional propulsion is an amazing innovation in design, affordability, and performance. The technology enables the spacecraft/lander to efficiently accelerate in multiple directions which in turn makes maneuvering possible in the moon’s airless exosphere.
The webinar covers:
- The role of Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) to manufacture a near net shape lightweight and efficient “quad” reaction control system
- Provide a recap of 2019 development efforts
- Examine multidisciplinary optimization in 2020-2021, including:
- Mass optimization using nTopology Software
- Manufacturing improvements using Velo3D’s end-to-end manufacturing solution
If you want to learn more about how Velo3D’s advanced end-to-end metal AM solution can transform your manufacturing process, get in touch with one of our expert engineers today.
