XCOR/Masten Joint Effort

[sdsds]

May 25th, 2010, Mojave, CA, USA:  XCOR Aerospace and Masten Space Systems, two of the leaders in the New Space sector, have announced a strategic business and technology relationship to pursue jointly the anticipated NASA sponsored unmanned lander projects.

http://www.xcor.com/press-releases/2010/10-05-25_XCOR_and_Masten_announce_Strategic_relationship_for_NASA_Landers.html

[jongoff]

May 25th, 2010, Mojave, CA, USA:  XCOR Aerospace and Masten Space Systems, two of the leaders in the New Space sector, have announced a strategic business and technology relationship to pursue jointly the anticipated NASA sponsored unmanned lander projects.

http://www.xcor.com/press-releases/2010/10-05-25_XCOR_and_Masten_announce_Strategic_relationship_for_NASA_Landers.html

:-)

[FinalFrontier]

May 25th, 2010, Mojave, CA, USA:  XCOR Aerospace and Masten Space Systems, two of the leaders in the New Space sector, have announced a strategic business and technology relationship to pursue jointly the anticipated NASA sponsored unmanned lander projects.

http://www.xcor.com/press-releases/2010/10-05-25_XCOR_and_Masten_announce_Strategic_relationship_for_NASA_Landers.html

:-)

Now what to launch (the test lander) on......... my vote is with Delta4.

[Robotbeat]

Congratulations! I was wondering when Masten was going to put a pump on a VTVL rocket. That should get you some significant weight reductions.

BTW, what do you guys think about carbon monoxide/LOX for propellant? Could it be possible to design a rocket engine that can use either CO or CH4?

[RocketEconomist327]

Congratulations to XCor and Masten Space Systems.  This is really a GREAT day for America and our space program.

VR
RS327

[jongoff]

May 25th, 2010, Mojave, CA, USA:  XCOR Aerospace and Masten Space Systems, two of the leaders in the New Space sector, have announced a strategic business and technology relationship to pursue jointly the anticipated NASA sponsored unmanned lander projects.

http://www.xcor.com/press-releases/2010/10-05-25_XCOR_and_Masten_announce_Strategic_relationship_for_NASA_Landers.html

:-)

Now what to launch (the test lander) on......... my vote is with Delta4.

Well, at least AIUI, this is initially for terrestrial freefliers, and only later on actual honest to goodness lunar landers.  That said, we definitely have some ideas, but a lot depends on where the technology is at by the time we get closer.

~Jon

[jongoff]

Congratulations! I was wondering when Masten was going to put a pump on a VTVL rocket. That should get you some significant weight reductions.

Yeah, we haven't needed pumps for our suborbital vehicles, because pressure fed was perfectly workable.  But for a lunar lander, having a good reliable pump helps quite a bit.  Especially if the NPSH requirements are low enough that you can be a bit more creative about tank shapes.

[Edit: I should note that I don't think we've explicitly decided whether or not we would use pumps on these jointly developed landers.  Details like that are TBD, and would probably depend on the specific lander application.]

BTW, what do you guys think about carbon monoxide/LOX for propellant? Could it be possible to design a rocket engine that can use either CO or CH4?

On the first, I'm sure you could do it, I'm just not sure it would be worth it.  The second one is more challenging.  I'm going to go out on a limb here, but my guess is that CO and CH4 have quite wildly different thermal properties, densities, and volumetric mixture ratios with LOX.  Making those line up with no changes is very not trivial.  Might be doable, but at the least you might end up needing variable geometry injectors (where the oxidizer and fuel elements are independently variable).  I'd rather sink time into a Sabatier system and making it work reliably and just deal with CH4 all around.

But all those are my opinions, and for these joint landers, I probably won't be involved as much on the propulsion side, so take those opinions with the appropriate sized grain of salt (and not in any way as representative of MSS or XCOR official positions).

All I can say is that the XCOR guys are great, and I'm really looking forward to being able to work with them.

~Jon

[neilh]

Sweet! I was quite excited when I read this in my inbox this morning. I'll see if I can slashdot the story for you guys.

Some time ago I was musing about what newspace companies I could see working on collaborative projects together, although XCOR/Masten wasn't one of the possibilities I had thought of.

[neilh]

Some time ago I was musing about what newspace companies I could see working on collaborative projects together, although XCOR/Masten wasn't one of the possibilities I had thought of.

Actually scratch that -- this might be an artificial memory, but a XCOR/Masten collaboration was something I pondered before, due to the their geographical proximity and areas of focus. Another possibility I pondered was Blue Origin & Armadillo, which would be quite interesting from a technical perspective. Their cultures (particularly when it comes to openness) are quite different, though.

[A_M_Swallow]

Do any XCOR/Mastern vehicles exist that are able to work in a vacuum?  If launched on an EELV to LEO they may be able to self ferry to low lunar orbit.  Refuel there and the landers could actually land.

[neilh]

Another thought: I wonder if any of the contenders for the Google Lunar X Prize would be keen on working with XCOR+Masten.

[jongoff]

Another thought: I wonder if any of the contenders for the Google Lunar X Prize would be keen on working with XCOR+Masten.

We wouldn't complain, especially if they have money.  :-)

~Jon

[robertross]

Oh, just saw this. Great news!
Congrats!

Anxious to see the fruits of your labours on this endeavour.

[mlorrey]

This is really awesome, tho it makes me wonder about XCOR's future interest in sticking with winged vehicles. Is XCOR going to continue those efforts as well?

[jongoff]

This is really awesome, tho it makes me wonder about XCOR's future interest in sticking with winged vehicles. Is XCOR going to continue those efforts as well?

I can't speak with XCOR at all, but...

Of course they're going to keep doing winged vehicles!  Just as Masten is going to keep building our own engines.  This announcement is for a joint marketing effort to go after a specific niche market that looks lucrative, and which we felt a teaming arrangement would provide a better story than us trying to reinvent XCOR's Methane engine work, or XCOR trying to build a VTVL vehicle.

In the end, both of our companies are primarily focused on the suborbital spaceflight (unmanned in our case, manned and unmanned in XCOR's case) markets.  Our goals are to build supersonic rocket powered vehicles that can reach the edge of space and come back safely (and do it again and again).  This lander business is mostly a cool bonus market that we can go after because of the technologies we have had to developed for our core market.

Or another way of putting it is that XCOR and Masten aren't lander companies so much as suborbital companies that happen to have all (or most of the pieces) to make some pretty amazing lunar landers as well.

Once again, this is non-C-level me speaking, so YMMV, void where prohibited, this doesn't represent official Masten,XCOR, or lunar alien positions, etc, etc.  :-)

~Jon