Author Topic: ULA Innovation: Integrated Vehicle Fluids (IVF)  (Read 145562 times)

Offline russianhalo117

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So does the WorldView 4 mission seem likely as the first test of the gaseous H2-O2 thrusters? This payload was called GeoEye 2 when it was sent to long term storage back in 2013....
its a good candidate. they havent selected the flight yet, but has begun procuring flight rated parts for the test flight.

Offline Newton_V

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So does the WorldView 4 mission seem likely as the first test of the gaseous H2-O2 thrusters? This payload was called GeoEye 2 when it was sent to long term storage back in 2013....

It will not have H2-O2 thrusters.
It will have cubesats though.

Offline TrevorMonty

What's the current thinking about the first mission on which IVF-Centaur will fly? Is there a USAF payload that makes sense for this? Or with the reemergence of commercial customers on Atlas (e.g. Morelos 3), could it be one of them?
I found this item.

http://www.ulalaunch.com/uploads/docs/Published_Papers/Supporting_Technologies/Orbital_Disposal_of_Launch_Vehicle_Upper_Stages_final.pdf

It seems fairly recent and they are talking specifically about a flight test in June 2016 for disposal of upper stages.  However they also talk of using fuel cells, which I thought was pretty much off the table.

Apparently upper stage disposal is tough, especially if the payload was bound for GEO. Tapping remaining propellant lets you put it in an orbit with a low probability of collision, which seems to be better than one which (eventually) decay to reentry, but in a fairly random way and hence could hit something on the way down.

I really hope this is going ahead. It will demonstrate (partly) the IVF concept works and gather operating data to help refine the design

ULA had done their 100th consecutive successful launch, as measured by their customers. As the first of the IVF flight trials it could be even more important to the company.

Here is FISO talk associated with orbital disposal paper.

http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Reed_8-5-15/

Offline Prober

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Was looking for a thread.....
a ULA video popped up, see some LM in this :)







older...
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Offline PahTo

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"Weeks" and "month(s)" of loiter time due to reduced boil off/use of advanced MLI, plus 10+ restart capability, plus in-space refueling.
Pretty snazzy, now "let's" make it happen!

Offline shooter6947

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"Weeks" and "month(s)" of loiter time due to reduced boil off/use of advanced MLI

This could be specifically enabling for planetary missions.  I know of some cases where amazing gravity assist trajectories were found that would save time and allow for high mass allocations for planetary deliveries to the outer solar system.  But they were so tightly peaked that there was only like 24-36 hours of launch window.  These used to be dismissed out of hand.  But with weeks of loiter, you could use such a tightly peaked gravity-assist trajectory if you launched a few weeks in advance of the 24-hour 'window', thereby allowing time for ground-based launch delays due to weather or technical concerns, or whatever.

Online rcoppola

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Would love to see this scaled up and offered as an SLS EUS upgrade path.
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Online rcoppola

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The weak part for me is the need to launch another expensive expendable launcher to refuel the 2nd stage. This is where having a reusable architecture would fit very nicely into an ACES architecture. Or vice versa. IMO.
« Last Edit: 08/26/2016 07:22 pm by rcoppola »
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Offline RonM

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The weak part for me is the need to launch another expensive expendable launcher to refuel the 2nd stage. This is where having a reusable architecture would fit very nicely into an ACES architecture. Or vice versa. IMO.

ULA is planning on later recovering the engines on the first stage. They say that would reduce first stage costs by 90%.

Offline brickmack

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The weak part for me is the need to launch another expensive expendable launcher to refuel the 2nd stage. This is where having a reusable architecture would fit very nicely into an ACES architecture. Or vice versa. IMO.

This is why asteroid/lunar mining is so important, they could get all that fuel in space and only need the one launch. Even before that happens, perhaps they could pool the residual fuel of multiple ACES from previous missions instead of dedicated tanker flights, at least for some profiles. A fully-fueled ACES in LEO will have a kinda ridiculous payload capacity to GEO (on the order of 25 tons to GEO direct insertion and back to LEO if my math is right), so even if an ACES only has like 10% of its fuel leftover from its first mission, thats good enough for most payloads not to need an additional tanker flight

Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Their Lunar ACES is pretty interesting. They are now using hydrolox for the small descent engines on the sides, instead of storable propellant.
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Offline Coastal Ron

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Would love to see this scaled up and offered as an SLS EUS upgrade path.

Well, with the "distributed lift" they talked about in the 2nd video we may not need the SLS at all.

Distributed lift and in-space assembly obviates the need for any non-commodity launcher, and ACES is one of the key technologies that can help make this happen.

I wish they would go faster with ACES, but at this point it's really tied to the development of Vulcan, so at least that should mean it will happen.
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

Offline jongoff

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The weak part for me is the need to launch another expensive expendable launcher to refuel the 2nd stage. This is where having a reusable architecture would fit very nicely into an ACES architecture. Or vice versa. IMO.

I think that even tanker launches by an expendable vehicle can give you some real benefits, but agree that pairing Vulcan/ACES with a more reusable earth-to-orbit launch vehicle can make the idea even better. The big takeaway I've always had for reusable vehicles is that you need a lot of flights per year for a fully-reusable vehicle to shine, and launching propellant for distributed lift could be just such a market.

It is interesting that ULA has good relationships with both Blue Origin (that is developing its own orbital RLV), and Masten (which is one of the contenders for XS-1's Phase 2), so there may be some interesting possibilities down the road.

The key is to enable upper-stage to upper-stage rendezvous and propellant transfer, which are pieces that I'm trying to get on the table with Altius.

~Jon

Offline sdsds

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The key is to enable upper-stage to upper-stage rendezvous and propellant transfer

Well put! For so long it seemed everyone thought a "depot" was required. Reality is slowly sinking in: a depot is nice but the key enabler is propellant transfer.

With Vulcan (or more specifically distributed launch), ULA is certainly expediting this shift in thinking!
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Offline Kansan52

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For a poor math boy, that chart really brings it home for me!

Offline jongoff

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The key is to enable upper-stage to upper-stage rendezvous and propellant transfer

Well put! For so long it seemed everyone thought a "depot" was required. Reality is slowly sinking in: a depot is nice but the key enabler is propellant transfer.

With Vulcan (or more specifically distributed launch), ULA is certainly expediting this shift in thinking!

Distributed Launch requires about 90% of the effort of a depot, but gives you more flexibility on parking orbits. One of the big dings on depots was that if you're going to some oddball destination (say a NEO) with a high declination, it's hard to get a LEO depot to work correctly without penalties (me and an astrogator friend of mine found a way, but haven't had the time to write it up yet). But with distributed lift, it's really a single-use depot that you can put in whatever parking orbit makes the most sense for the mission.

Really distributed lift is just the fuzzy end of a spectrum of "depot" options, but unlike depots, ULA is allowed by its parents to talk about distributed lift...

Note also that the numbers you provided assume only a partial (<50%) refilling of the ~70mT ACES tank--what you'd get with a two Vulcan/ACES launch architecture. If you refilled the tank all the way (using a second tanker, or something more reusable topping the first tanker all the way up before you launch the departure ACES/spacecraft), you'd get the full 36mT LEO payload to a 28km^2/s^2 C3, which is more than GEO or LLO insertion, and more than most TMI injections.

~Jon
« Last Edit: 08/30/2016 10:44 pm by jongoff »

Offline TrevorMonty

Distributed Lift may not need to wait for ACES. They are planning on converting Centuar to IVF and paper gives scenarios where Centuar is used.

Offline HIP2BSQRE

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The weak part for me is the need to launch another expensive expendable launcher to refuel the 2nd stage. This is where having a reusable architecture would fit very nicely into an ACES architecture. Or vice versa. IMO.

I think that even tanker launches by an expendable vehicle can give you some real benefits, but agree that pairing Vulcan/ACES with a more reusable earth-to-orbit launch vehicle can make the idea even better. The big takeaway I've always had for reusable vehicles is that you need a lot of flights per year for a fully-reusable vehicle to shine, and launching propellant for distributed lift could be just such a market.

It is interesting that ULA has good relationships with both Blue Origin (that is developing its own orbital RLV), and Masten (which is one of the contenders for XS-1's Phase 2), so there may be some interesting possibilities down the road.

The key is to enable upper-stage to upper-stage rendezvous and propellant transfer, which are pieces that I'm trying to get on the table with Altius.

~Jon

Jon,

Who has need for distributed lift? 

Offline jongoff

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Who has need for distributed lift? 

Not counting any future interplanetary stuff, ULA often provides direct GSO insertion flights, and those could potentially benefit from some level of distributed lift.

Longer-term, anyone trying to do anything serious beyond LEO should give distributed lift serious thought. Especially if coupled with a cheap propellant source, it's a very affordable way of doing beyond LEO transportation.

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Distributed Lift may not need to wait for ACES. They are planning on converting Centuar to IVF and paper gives scenarios where Centuar is used.

As I understand it, they're planning on doing some level of IVF demonstration on Centaur, but I'm not sure they're going to redesign Centaur to make IVF an operational part of it.

~Jon

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