Momentus Space

[TrevorMonty]

What's stopping Rocket Lab from expanding the capabilities of the kick stage, and effectively do what this company is trying to do by marketing it? Curie has the flight heritage under its belt.

Electron's performance. 150–225 kg to LEO leaves almost zero margin for hardware that isn't payload. Vigoride will weigh no less than 80 kg wet per Momentus' website, meaning that the limits of Electron would be ~140 kg to a 700 km elliptical orbit with Vigoride providing a max of 1 km/s dV (for a 50 kg payload) from there. That is by no means shabby but it's really hard to conceive of more than a tiny handful of customers for something like that.

Electron market may not be that big for them especially as Curie does alot of what Vigoride does. Their larger tugs when used with new range of 1000-1250kg LVs is lot more interesting. Delivering smallsats to GEO and Lunar orbit.

[Tywin]

First contract for Vigoride with a german company, ECM Space...

https://spacenews.com/momentus-first-vigoride-customer/

[Steven Pietrobon]

First contract for Vigoride with a german company, ECM Space...

https://spacenews.com/momentus-first-vigoride-customer/

Would be good to know the name of their test satellite and launch vehicle.

"Momentus plans to conduct an in-orbit demonstration of its key technology, a water-plasma engine, in March or April."

[jongoff]

First contract for Vigoride with a german company, ECM Space...

https://spacenews.com/momentus-first-vigoride-customer/

Would be good to know the name of their test satellite and launch vehicle.

"Momentus plans to conduct an in-orbit demonstration of its key technology, a water-plasma engine, in March or April."

IIRC, Astro Digital (another company the Momentus CEO is financially involved with) is building the bus for their demo flight. Based on past history, my guess is they'd be going up on either a Soyuz or a PSLV.

~Jon

[brickmack]

http://fiso.spiritastro.net/telecon/Sercel_12-12-18/

FISO presentation in december

[TorenAltair]

First contract for Vigoride with a german company, ECM Space...

https://spacenews.com/momentus-first-vigoride-customer/

Would be good to know the name of their test satellite and launch vehicle.

"Momentus plans to conduct an in-orbit demonstration of its key technology, a water-plasma engine, in March or April."

They used only Soyuz rockets so far. They have 5 missions scheduled this year. The price is 30000 Euros per kg.
„[...] including a 16-unit cubesat for in-space transportation startup Momentus, into orbit on a Russian Soyuz rocket. [...]“

[Bananas_on_Mars]

.

[TrevorMonty]

.

Just listen to interview, they are a company worth watching.

I don't see them using Electron with Vigoride for SSO missions as Curie already this covered.

Here aresome  more interesting BLEO possibilities are.

The Vigoride Extended on LauncherOne can deliver 100kg to GEO or Lunar Orbit.

Using Firefly Alpha or Relativity Terran1, +200kg (guess) to earth escape, that is useful size interplanetary smallsat. With combined Vigorode and LV cost likely to be under $20m.

Ardoride on Vega C can deliver 500kg to GEO and Lunar Orbit.

Vigoride is built waiting for maiden launch this year. Extended should be avaliable next year.

[TrevorMonty]

With Fervoride OTV the F9R could deliver 6-8t to lunar gateway.

No way around chemical engines for landers and HSF but for cargo and fuel between LEO -LLO -LEO Fervoride OTV would ideal, especially if lunar water is avaliable in LLO.
There is issue of solar panel degradation every time OTV passes through Van Allen belt, but this should be lot less compared to normal SEP, due to faster trip time.

[TrevorMonty]

Their demostrator mission was on yesterdays Soyzu launch.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/07/05/soyuz-rocket-and-fregat-upper-stage-deliver-33-satellites-to-three-different-orbits/

One of the rideshare satellites launched Friday is owned by a Silicon Valley-based company named Momentus, which is developing a line of Vigoride orbital transfer vehicles that are designed to ferry CubeSats and other small payloads from low Earth orbit to higher altitudes.

Momentus’s first mission will demonstrate a novel water-based propulsion system. Momentus developed the microwave electrothermal thruster, which uses water as a propellant, to power the company’s Vigoride space tugs. Momentus named its first mission, based on a 16-unit CubeSat built by Astro Digital, “El Camino Real”after the route built by early Spanish settlers in California.

“On this mission we will be the first to fly a microwave electrothermal plasma rocket in space to prove the technical feasibility of our high performance water rockets,” wrote Joel Sercel, chief technology officer at Momentus, in an updated on the company’s website.

The El Camino Real spacecraft is about the size of a suitcase.

“We will be flying our technology demonstration of water based microwave electrothermal propulsion on a CubeSat even though the in space rockets, or orbit transfer vehicles, we are building are bigger than that and can carry many CubeSats on a single mission,” Sercel wrote. “El Camino Real is flying on a CubeSat because it is the most cost effective way to do this key technology demonstration.”

[TrevorMonty]

Momentus will be providing propulsion for this TransAstra demo mission. These are sister companies which Joel seems to float between. Listen Dec2018 FISO podcast few posts above for more information about their relationship.


https://newatlas.com/nasa-asteroid-lunar-mining-projects/60074/

The second mission is the Mini Bee prototype. Part of the broader Apis mission by Joel Sercel of the TransAstra Corporation, the goal is to build a flight demonstration satellite that will show the practicality of using mirrors to focus sunlight on asteroids to boil off water and other volatiles so they can be collected for use as propellants and other applications.

[TrevorMonty]

They plan to start services with expendable vehicles, long term plan is to make them reuseable by refuelling.

ISS orbit is likely location for refuelling also good place to pickup satellites for deployment. Other companies are working assembling satellites in orbit, most likely at ISS or nearby commercial station.

[brickmack]

Has anyone seen any studies on how large a fluid tank ISS could support (within structural/attitude control/physical volume limits)? Initial Momentus vehicles would need only a few hundred kg of water aggregation at ISS, but at several tons slosh dynamics and such seem likely problematic.

[Robotbeat]

Has anyone seen any studies on how large a fluid tank ISS could support (within structural/attitude control/physical volume limits)? Initial Momentus vehicles would need only a few hundred kg of water aggregation at ISS, but at several tons slosh dynamics and such seem likely problematic.

I think you'd need more than several tons for it to be really problematic. Also, that just complicates tank design slightly.

[TrevorMonty]

Don't need depot attached to ISS just nearby. Orbit Fab (wantabe fuel depot company) idea was to use surplus payload capacity on Cygnus for early tanker.

Orbit Fab did FISO podcast Feb2019 if you want find out more.
http://fiso.spiritastro.net/archivelist.htm

[gongora]

https://twitter.com/pbdes/status/1151523001755734016

.@momentusspace raises $25.5M from @DakinSloss #primemoverslab, @ycombinator @QuietCapital @mountainnazca, for water-vapor powered vehicles taking satellites from LEO drop-off to desired orbits. Demo launched July 5, passenger-carrying missions in 2020.

[TrevorMonty]

Not sure of this passenger carry capability. Their Fervoride OTV is good for 6-8t to Lunar gateway, but that will be trip of few weeks or months, not really suitable for passengers.

[gongora]

Not sure of this passenger carry capability. Their Fervoride OTV is good for 6-8t to Lunar gateway, but that will be trip of few weeks or months, not really suitable for passengers.

When Peter said "passengers" I'm pretty sure he meant satellites, not humans.

[brickmack]

It would be an interesting cislunar cargo vehicle though. Similar niche to that SNC/Boeing/NG/LM are expected to try to fill with their PPE-derived cargo vehicles, but could come out ahead with (likely) shorter travel time and much cheaper propellant.

[TrevorMonty]

They would be designing tug using traditional solar arrays, with NG Ultraflex one best at 150w/kg. Made In Space will be flying demo in 2022 that prints boom in space for array, with 500w/kg performance. Probably lot cheaper than Ultraflex given simpler and more compact design.

With solar arrays of this performance the tug should be even more capable given lower dry mass.