Skyrora

[SciNews]

From Skyrora
The UKs first complete ground rocket test in 50 years takes place in Scotland https://www.skyrora.com/post/the-uks-first-complete-ground-rocket-test-in-50-years-takes-place-in-scotland
Skylark-L’s static fire testing

[Robotbeat]

...

A 3d printed engine is a serious achievement.

I would not go that far. Dozens of companies and student organizations have printed rocket engines. For small runs it is easier than traditional manufacturing. At this point, 3d printed engines are a sign that a company has no plan to mass produce rockets.

I kind of agree for the most part (3D printing is generally slower than traditional manufacturing, it just requires less tooling and maybe fewer parts--if you can handle the reduction in material properties), but it's hard to say that RocketLab *isn't* kind of mass producing their 3D printed rocket engines since they've made about 200 of them so far. Probably making more engines than anyone else except SpaceX and Russia and may soon eclipse Russia.

I mean, it's not mass production like cars are mass produced, but still... OTRAG and Astra have only theoretically eclipsed RocketLab in mass production.

[john smith 19]

I would not go that far. Dozens of companies and student organizations have printed rocket engines. For small runs it is easier than traditional manufacturing. At this point, 3d printed engines are a sign that a company has no plan to mass produce rockets.

If by "rocket engine" you mean "Lump of acrylic (or some other combustible solid) you can run GO2 through to make a hybrid thruster" I'd agree with you.
If you mean "rocket engine" as "thrust chamber you push some high pressure gas in as a cold gas thruster" I'd still agree with you.

If you mean mean a high thrust (tonnes), pumped liquid rocket engine I think the list is considerably shorter.

I'd love to see someone do AM a version of the Whitehead teams positive displacement reciprocating pump design, but I've never heard of anyone doing so. I suspect the tolerances are too tight, but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

[ringsider]

From Skyrora
The UKs first complete ground rocket test in 50 years takes place in Scotland https://www.skyrora.com/post/the-uks-first-complete-ground-rocket-test-in-50-years-takes-place-in-scotland
Skylark-L’s static fire testing

I don't think this is the first ground test or even launch in the UK - everybody forgets Starchaser...



What's more interesting is that this rocket seems to have been built in the exact same room that Firefly and Skyrora have showed before in their shared Ukrainian factory:-



Which makes you wonder why they bother shipping it to the UK to do this marketing exercise. Are they getting some financial support from the UK?

[daedalus1]

Ringsider.
The main broadcaster in the U.K. didn't mention it, so that marketing angle failed. I doubt close on 100% of the British people have even heard of it.

[Celestial_Mech]

Hi, cool to see we have a thread!

It is a puzzle as to what to call our pump fed engines, staged uncombustion perhaps! We're a step on from the Gamma engine, we have catalytic ignition/injection like the Gamma, and a separate steam generator for the turbine, however, we then recover the oxygen rich exhaust from the turbine to the main chamber (rather than dump it over the side like the Gamma did). So we are closed cycle-staged, but via decomposition.  These approaches let us vastly simplfy the two big hassles with new biliquids, injector design and turbopump development; all the oxidiser is turned to hot gas before entering the chamber, promoting excellent mixing and with the added advantage of being "virtual hypergolic" ignition.  Then we can run the turbopumps on 600 degree steam, with no mixture ratio control, instead of a few thousand degrees.  Recovering the exhaust takes us the next step.  So peroxide gives a lightly stressed (well you know relatively), highly cooled, easy mixing, low temp turbopump engine, which we really can additive manufacture directly.  As far as I can see Rolls Royce considered recovering the turbine exhaust in the 60s but never did it, and I think the Reaction Motors LR40 aircraft rocket engine was the only one built with a similar cycle (though they had back luck with that which seems to have been what put the US industry off peroxide). I'd be very interested if anyone knows of other examples of this staged un-combustion approach.

With regards Starchaser, I worked there in the very early noughties on the X Prize, it was a great experience, we got around to testing 3 tonne KeroLox biliquids at a major UK government lab. But the management and experience wasn't really there, and activity tailed off after SpaceShip1. So Starchaser never got around to building a proper vehicle around the bi-liquids, just building huge things powered by clusters of HPR motors. They've been trying to make a comeback in the last couple of years, but if you look at the video of that Skybolt flight at Otterburn you can see at second 35 that it is just powered by five Aerotech 98mm HPR motors!

Skylark L is only our suborbital step (though we've been surprised by how much interest there is in commercial suborbital payload launch), so XL will be about twice the height and three times the diameter of the vehicle you see in the video.

I do hope we'll have more exciting stuff to show in the near future!

[Steven Pietrobon]

Thanks for your post Celestial_Mech. Great to hear you guys are developing a closed cycle HTP engine!

[Star One]

Ringsider.
The main broadcaster in the U.K. didn't mention it, so that marketing angle failed. I doubt close on 100% of the British people have even heard of it.

Well I’ve heard of it and a number of the U.K. newspapers including two of the biggest circulation titles did cover the news, which is all the more impressive considering there is this little thing called a global pandemic going on, perhaps you missed that fact, and how that will dominate the media in most countries. So in other words their PR didn’t fail.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1284870/uk-space-rockets-scotland-spaceport-skyrora-black-arrow

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/rocket-test-scotland-uk-skyrora-skylark-l-a9525476.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8339713/British-firm-ground-tests-rocket-UK-soil-50-years.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/11672533/uk-space-race-ground-rocket-test/

[daedalus1]

Ringsider.
The main broadcaster in the U.K. didn't mention it, so that marketing angle failed. I doubt close on 100% of the British people have even heard of it.

Well I’ve heard of it and a number of the U.K. newspapers including two of the biggest circulation titles did cover the news, which is all the more impressive considering there is this little thing called a global pandemic going on, perhaps you missed that fact, and how that will dominate the media in most countries. So in other words their PR didn’t fail.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1284870/uk-space-rockets-scotland-spaceport-skyrora-black-arrow

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/rocket-test-scotland-uk-skyrora-skylark-l-a9525476.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8339713/British-firm-ground-tests-rocket-UK-soil-50-years.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/11672533/uk-space-race-ground-rocket-test/

I did say the main broadcaster.

[jebbo]

The BBC covered it.

"BBC News - Rocket test first of its kind in UK in 50 years"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-52740857

--- Tony

[daedalus1]

The BBC covered it.

"BBC News - Rocket test first of its kind in UK in 50 years"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-52740857

--- Tony

That's website I'm talking broadcast. As in TV. With a 24 hour news channel and only requiring a few minutes to cover the story. I am disappointed thet the BBC didn't cover it.
I know that there is a pandemic (sarcastic comment from Star One) but I think you can easily fit this in between telling us the same thing a hundred times.

[ringsider]

Hi, cool to see we have a thread!

Glad you have joined us.

Could you perhaps give your thoughts on some areas being discussed?

1) Your website states you have 5 times more people in Ukraine than UK, and positions the UK as your HQ, while Ukraine is your R&D center (https://www.skyrora.com/who-we-are). Why bother shipping all that stuff to Scotland with that setup? What do you gain from having a front office in the UK?

2) Where are you launching this rocket from? Is there somewhere in the UK or will you go to somewhere with an existing launch setup like Sweden?

3) Companies like Vector (RIP), your own company, Interstellar in Japan, and Spain's PLD Space are going down the suborbital route with the explanation you can transfer large amounts of technology to an orbital vehicle later. But the mainstream view seems to be that orbital vehicles are on another level of cost/scale/complexity/performance/risk/reliability to what is acceptable in a suborbital rocket. Why does htis path make sense fo Slyrora?

4) You are somewhat dismissive of the high power rocketry motors in the Starchaser rocket but didn't you also use off-the-shelf motors in the small launcher Nano (https://www.skyrora.com/skylark-nano)? You promoted Nano as a major commercial step forward  ("'First' commercial rocket launched from Scotland", BBC), but Starchaser was not? What's different?

5) There seem to be some similarities in the way you promote your achievements and the path taken by Vector Launch Inc. e.g. big PR about technical results. Vector used to make similar claims, with an ultimately unfortunate outcome. Do you think it is wise to be treading that path?

6) Can you clarify your relationship with Firefly Aerospace? Do you share the Ukrainian R&D center with them?

7) Who will launch their suborbital rocket in Europe first: you or PLD Space? ;o)

[Celestial_Mech]

Pleased to be here!

1. We can draw on a wider pool of experience from the Ukrainian office, but we're a UK company founded in Edinburgh to access the potential of UK launch. The government has been after that happening for a decade now, though clearly the first ministers were totally sold on Skylon and Virgin Galactic, so they started off looking at big runways in the west!  No hardware is produced in Ukraine, with our engineering activities happening between our UK and Slovakian centres.  With our Dnipro R&D centre we can draw upon that tremendous experience in the country (as Firefly do, more of that later!) which is otherwise rather lost since the Russian annexation.

2. Our core aim is to operate from the prospective UK vertical spaceport, we're friends with all three serious contenders, and hope to see them available soon. But of course we will consider other sites if we're ready and they are not.  As you'll see from the pictures though we need very little infrastructure.

3. Orbital is a big jump, and we've seen that as the obstacle for so many start-ups, but in our case Skylark-L is a genuinely good stepping stone to XL.  Composite structures, engine printing, flight systems, avionics, all help de-risk the orbital vehicle; and of course even just building up launch operation experience with a full bi-liquid. Remember there's only ever been a few solid sounding rockets flown to space from the UK, and none recently; our launcher industry flew in Australia and was killed off in the seventies, so there's perhaps more value to us of this than there would be in the US where you have had a continous launcher industry and domestic launch.  We are getting a lot of interest now in commercial suborbits, so it will be cool if we can make thatr business case close to bring in revenue sooner.

4. Ah no totally, the HPR motors are tremendously useful, Nano was a useful starting launch to capture public interest, we really have much less public familiarity with rocket launching than the US. But next up we're using HPR motors in Micro to carry out range and electronics tests, push higher and faster than any private rocket has gone in the UK, and it's even helped us start pushing through the (all new) regulations being created in the UK that will apply to SK-L and XL. But Micro is a minimum diameter two stager designed round the payload, and to get the best out of this cheap and handy off-the-shelf propulsion whilst the bi-liquids are under development.  In other words an aerospace vehicle that happens to use HPR motors.  Starchaser Skybolt launch has been "Whatabouted" in the press a bit, aside from the fact all our press said "first ground test in 50 years (actually it's 49 but the papers like to round up!)" you can see Skybolt is empty, it's designed from the outside in, a model in other words, with only 2.5 times the propulsion we're using in 100mm diameter Micro.  It probably has 70,000Ns if those are all N2000ws seeing as their Aerotech annodising, P class, capable of 4000 feet.  As I mentioned I worked at Starchaser, and it was great, I got to work on those multitonne Kerolox engines, but they've never flown a proper design.  So it was a bit galling to have that launch tacked on!

5. Well we want to build profile, but we've only anounced serious tests as big things outside background social media, whereas (and I'm very willing to be corrected) Vector's launch to a few thousand feet reminded me of Starchaser! It was clearly bespoke propulsion, but I wasn't clear as to the point of that flight.  Whereas this ground test is a proper step along the engineering development, and again you've got to remember this from a UK perspective we've had nothing like this since the government canned everything before our entire team was born!

6. No Firefly is completely separate, as has been noted the founders are friends! They used to work together but the two space companies are not connected.  Tom Markusic was kind enough to be on our advisory board for our first year. So our relationship with Firefly?  Friendly rivalry! (though I concede they have a heck of a head start, I can't wait to see them launch Alpha, I think there's plenty of opportunity for the serious developers, if not all 140ish companies currently at it!)

7. Us of course! Though we've partied with some of the PLD team and wish them well!

[Star One]

The BBC covered it.

"BBC News - Rocket test first of its kind in UK in 50 years"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-52740857

--- Tony

That's website I'm talking broadcast. As in TV. With a 24 hour news channel and only requiring a few minutes to cover the story. I am disappointed thet the BBC didn't cover it.
I know that there is a pandemic (sarcastic comment from Star One) but I think you can easily fit this in between telling us the same thing a hundred times.

The majority of pieces on the BBC website will usually get broadcast somewhere, generally on their 24 hour news channel because of the BBC’s reduced budget they tend to not make so much website specific news pieces these days.

[daedalus1]

The BBC covered it.

"BBC News - Rocket test first of its kind in UK in 50 years"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-52740857

--- Tony

That's website I'm talking broadcast. As in TV. With a 24 hour news channel and only requiring a few minutes to cover the story. I am disappointed thet the BBC didn't cover it.
I know that there is a pandemic (sarcastic comment from Star One) but I think you can easily fit this in between telling us the same thing a hundred times.

The majority of pieces on the BBC website will usually get broadcast somewhere, generally on their 24 hour news channel because of the BBC’s reduced budget they tend to not make so much website specific news pieces these days.

They did not broadcast it on the TV news, as I previously said.

[gin455res]

Hi, cool to see we have a thread!

Hi.
Couple of questions if that is okay?

1) Do you have any plans for re-usability?
2)a Is the peroxide the coolant?
2)b if peroxide is the coolant: i) how does the hot peroxide decompose compared to cold peroxide? ; ii) is there any thermal decomposition in the cooling passages, or only in a catalyst pack?

3)  Are both fuel and oxidiser impellors on the same shaft?
4)  Since the fuel ratio is so low , would it make any sense to decouple the oxidiser pump from the fuel pump and use an electric pump for the fuel?

[Celestial_Mech]

Hi
Certainly-ish!

1. We're not currently active on reusabilty, but I'm sure everyone will be compelled to at some stage. Very interested to see how RocketLab's attempt goes.

2. Yep as with the Gamma engines, it's a tremendous coolant and there's loads of it.

3. I couldn't possibly comment

4. However I can confirm both propellants are rocket pumped, I think electric pumps are shortcut that just costs you in the longtime, unless batteries get a lot better, which they might.

[john smith 19]

Hi
Certainly-ish!
4. However I can confirm both propellants are rocket pumped, I think electric pumps are shortcut that just costs you in the longtime, unless batteries get a lot better, which they might.

Lithium ion battery tech improves roughly 10% year on year according to the report linked to in the electron thread.

Likewise power electronics is about a $40Bn/year industry with strong incentives to improve device power ratings. Faster switching times and lower on resistance --> smaller losses --> more efficient use of limited power, although EMI is likely to be an increasing issue.

Magnetic materials improve more slowly but there is interest in electric motor actuators for use deep inside jet engines, which need higher curie temp materials to run with limited (ideally no) cooling.

The attraction of the technology is that it can leverage improvements made by these industries to support much bigger (and bigger revenue generating) market segments. The joker is qualifying upgraded parts across the whole range of temp/vibration/pressures found in a launch, which most applications just don't need. This implies block upgrades after X number of launches of any (or all) of the batteries/controllers/motors tech.

However if you're committed to HTP and 3d printing Masten's work on making a plastic combustion chamber  opens a whole new possible solution space.  Plastics exist with operating temps to 300c and with densities relative to a super alloy (baseline SG 7.8 ) of 3.9-5.2x lighter than baseline there appears to be huge potential for improved T/W ratio improvement. Pumps casing would be an obvious change but as you're using room temp liquids the impellers would also be candidates. They could be much bigger (thicker sections to carry the load) but still be lighter.

However I guess the focus at the moment will be to get something off the pad in one piece.

[Celestial_Mech]

Indeed, I'm very excited to see how it develops for electric aviation, I think we'll see that coming together much faster than electric cars did.  The incredible simplicity, and the chance to do all those boundary layer and convertiplane tricks that were always too difficult with traditional propulsion!

Once you've got the hang of turbines I suspect they'll always have the edge on electical systems, but then again, if they're super cheap, simple and reliable...

I hadn't heard about the Masten's plastic chambers that's fascinating, in a previous position one of our team researched vortex cooling (I should be clear because of IP we are not using it, but his research is a matter of public record) and succeeded in creating a glass walled gas-gas demonstrator with vortex cooling like Orbitec.  Given high conductivity, and maybe integral fibre reinforcement it's intriguing to consider what additive manufacture could enable in polymers.  In line with our cautious design, focussed on manufacturability, we're using what is now very well proven metal additive manufacture for our engines!

[john smith 19]

Once you've got the hang of turbines I suspect they'll always have the edge on electical systems, but then again, if they're super cheap, simple and reliable...

Turbine driven power generation is pretty attractive if you have lots of stuff that need to be run.

I hadn't heard about the Masten's plastic chambers that's fascinating, in a previous position one of our team researched vortex cooling (I should be clear because of IP we are not using it, but his research is a matter of public record) and succeeded in creating a glass walled gas-gas demonstrator with vortex cooling like Orbitec.  Given high conductivity, and maybe integral fibre reinforcement it's intriguing to consider what additive manufacture could enable in polymers.  In line with our cautious design, focussed on manufacturability, we're using what is now very well proven metal additive manufacture for our engines!

Vortex cooling is clever but AFAIK the Masten stuff was fairly conventional using water cooling instead of regenerative cooling using the propellants. Apparently they written an AIAA paper outlining the work. Interestingly it was not  an IRAD but done as part of a contract for an outside customer, who had to agree the approach beforehand. That suggests they had made a pretty solid case for it being possible.

The surprising thing was the level of thermal conductivity you can get out of the right modern plastic, with or without fillers. The real breakthrough was realizing that a plastic combustion chamber was possible in the first place. Apparently stretched UHMW polythene can manage 40Wm^-1K^-1.

One technology I think is under exploited in plastics is "rotomolding" where a heated mold is spun (fairly gently) in 2 axes to gradually build up layers of plastic. It's popular for making large hollow shapes, like for tanks, where the mfg volumes can't justify an injection mold. 

There is also the possibility of coating some kind of preform make in some other material to create composite properties.

However I'm not surprised you will be focusing on metal AM for the near term. I look forward to your first launch with considerable excitement.