Month: October 2023

When it comes to the current era of space exploration, one of the most important trends is the way new technologies and processes are lowering the cost of sending crews and payloads to space. Beyond the commercial space sector and the development of retrievable and reusable rockets, space agencies are also finding new ways to make space more accessible and affordable. This includes NASA, which recently built and tested an aluminum rocket engine nozzle manufactured using their new Reactive Additive Manufacturing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (RAMFIRE) process.

Additive manufacturing (AM), otherwise known as 3D printing, has led to a revolution in manufacturing. Unlike traditional machine production, which fashions things from raw materials and throws away what is not used, 3D printing builds made-to-order components from the bottom up. This production process creates virtually no waste and is very rapid, cost-effective, and efficient compared to traditional methods. Whereas it was once confined to modeling and prototyping, the technology’s applications have expanded considerably in recent years – including the aerospace industry.

The aluminum nozzle was developed by NASA’s Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity in partnership with the leading AM company Elementum 3D. Based in Erie, Colorado, Elementum 3D specializes in metal alloy additive manufacturing research, material and print process development, and scaled-production methods. In 2020, the company was selected as part of an Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity to create a weldable type of aluminum that is heat-resistant enough to be used in rocket engines, leading to the aluminum variant known as A6061-RAM2.

Compared to other metals, aluminum has a lower density and can enable high-strength, lightweight components. However, with conventional manufacturing, a rocket nozzle may require a thousand individually joined parts. This makes aluminum impractical since it has a low tolerance to extreme heat and a tendency to crack during welding. The RAMFIRE process, which was funded under NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), does away with this by producing aluminum components as a single piece, requiring far fewer bonds and significantly reduced manufacturing time. 

In addition, the nozzles are designed with small internal channels that keep the nozzle cool enough to prevent melting. Meanwhile, the RAMFIRE 3D printer and process were developed by another commercial partner, RPM Innovations (RPMI). This South Dakota-based company specializes in Directed Energy Deposition (DED), where layers of powdered alloy are deposited and fused by lasers. When combined with Elementum 3D’s specialized aluminum powder, the resulting process is known as laser powder-directed energy deposition (LP-DED).

Earlier this summer, two RAMFIRE nozzles completed a series of hot-fire tests at the Marshall Space Flight Center’s East Test Area in Huntsville, Alabama. The nozzles performed well using liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid hydrogen (LH2), as well as LOX and liquid methane fuel configurations, and at pressures exceeding 5690 kilopascals (825 psi) – higher than what is anticipated for launches. The nozzles successfully completed 22 start tests and fired for nearly 10 minutes, demonstrating that they can operate in the most demanding deep-space environments. Paul Gradl, RAMFIRE principal investigator at NASA Marshall, said in a NASA press release:

“Industry partnerships with specialty manufacturing vendors aid in advancing the supply base and help make additive manufacturing more accessible for NASA missions and the broader commercial and aerospace industry. This test series marks a significant milestone for the nozzle. After putting the nozzle through the paces of a demanding hot-fire test series, we’ve demonstrated the nozzle can survive the thermal, structural, and pressure loads for a lunar lander scale engine.”

Liftoff of Terran 1, the first rocket made entirely using 3D-printed parts. Credit: Relativity Space/Michael Baylor

NASA also demonstrated the effectiveness of 3D-printed components in March 2023 when Relativity Space test-launched their Terran 1 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This test rocket was the first to be made entirely of 3D-printed parts, including nine engines made of an innovative alloy known as Glenn Research Copper (GRCop). These engines were additively manufactured at NASA’s Glenn Research Center under the agency’s Game Changing Development program, and were able to tolerate temperatures approaching 3,315 °C (6,000 °F) – up to 40% higher than traditional copper alloys.

In addition to rocket nozzles and engines, RAMFIRE has also manufactured a 91-centimeter (36-inch) diameter aerospike nozzle incorporating components for cryogenic fuel applications. These innovations are crucial to NASA’s Moon to Mars program, which includes Project Artemis and returning astronauts to the Moon, and the creation of the lunar infrastructure necessary to mount crewed missions to Mars. Intrinsic to this program is the capability of sending larger payloads to the Moon, Mars, and other deep-space destinations.

By manufacturing lightweight rocket components capable of withstanding higher structural loads and extreme temperatures, NASA is one step closer to returning to the Moon (to stay) and placing boots on Martian soil. Said John Vickers, the principal technologist for STMD advanced manufacturing:

“Mass is critical for NASA’s future deep space missions. Projects like this mature additive manufacturing along with advanced materials, and will help evolve new propulsion systems, in-space manufacturing, and infrastructure needed for NASA’s ambitious missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.”

Further Reading: NASA

Like this:

Like Loading…

From the MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN

Francis Menton

A couple of days ago, a Substack called Doomberg had a piece titled “False Utopia.” The piece featured a discussion of a post of mine from February 2023 with the title “We Must Demand A Demonstration Project Of A Mainly Renewables-Based Electrical Grid.” My post argued that we should demand a demonstration project of a mainly renewables-based electrical grid that would include all the key elements — generation mainly from solar and wind, plus sufficient back-up or storage to make the whole thing work for the long term without involvement of the evil fossil fuels, plus any other necessary elements to make the whole thing work.

The Doomberg guys called my post “brilliant,” which is very flattering. I would not say it was brilliant, but only that it says obvious things that for some reason few other people are saying. Among the people who will definitely not mention the need for an all-element fossil-fuel-free renewable grid demonstration project are government officials and green energy advocates. The reasons they won’t mention this need could be (1) they are not bright enough to understand the subject, or (2) their understanding is impaired because they are too blinded by religious fervor to “save the planet,” or (3) they are intentionally deceiving the public to make money or fame or career advancement for themselves. Or it could be all three!

Meanwhile though, the government “net zero” or “Green New Deal” (or whatever they are currently called) promotional sites are full of talk of things they call demonstration projects. So are they responding to my demand? The opposite. All of what they call demonstration projects follow a common approach, which is only to attempt to demonstrate various portions of the full system that would be needed to provide reliable 24/7/365 electricity from predominantly wind and solar generation.

Consider for instance the latest news on energy storage. A few days ago on October 13, the Department of Energy announced big new grants and subsidies for a series of what they call “hydrogen hubs.” Here is a report from E&E News Energy Wire. Excerpt:

The Department of Energy on Friday announced seven projects that will receive $7 billion to build landmark hydrogen hubs, delivering a major boost to a nascent U.S. industry. The long-awaited move is a key piece of the Biden administration’s climate agenda. On Friday, the White House said it expects the DOE funding to help cut 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, roughly equivalent to removing 5.5 million gasoline-powered vehicles from the road each year. “With this historic investment, the Biden-Harris administration is laying the foundation for a new, American-led industry that will propel the global clean energy transition,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

According to this further piece from Energy Wire on August 21, the Biden Administration has set a goal of having the U.S. produce 10 million metric tons of “green” hydrogen (by electrolysis from water) by 2030. The E&E piece states that the massive funding for “hydrogen hubs” is coming from a part of the Energy Department called the “Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations,” and also cites the Department as calling the hydrogen hubs “demonstrations.” So this must be the demonstration project we are calling for!

Not quite:

DOE envisions the hydrogen hubs as a demonstration of production, storage, transport and consumption.

I guess at least this is intended to be a demonstration of more than just production of the hydrogen. But still, they are clearly leaving out the critical piece of the puzzle, which is the demonstration of how much of this hydrogen, and capacity to make more of it, will be needed, and at what cost, to get the country — or even some small town — through a full year (or two or five) without need for fossil fuel backup. That completely obvious elephant is not part of this multi-billion dollar “demonstration.”

And DOE is not putting all of its energy storage eggs in the hydrogen basket. They separately have another big bucks effort called the “Long Duration Storage Shot” that is throwing bucketsful of cash at various research efforts into batteries. But the battery efforts are even farther removed from any relevant demonstration project. From DOE’s opening webpage describing that initiative (with a date of September 2021):

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Earthshots Initiative aims to accelerate breakthroughs of more abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy solutions within the decade. Achieving the Energy Earthshots will help America tackle the toughest remaining barriers to addressing the climate crisis, and more quickly reach the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 while creating good-paying union jobs and growing the clean energy economy. . . . The Long Duration Storage Shot establishes a target to reduce the cost of grid-scale energy storage by 90% for systems that deliver 10+ hours of duration within the decade.

On September 22, 2023 the Administration announced some $325 million for “15 projects across 17 states and one tribal nation” to “accelerate the development” of these “long duration” battery technologies. The $325 million may seem rather paltry compared to the $7 billion just thrown at the hydrogen hub thing last week; but don’t worry, they have many billions more to spread around on this over the coming months.

So are these battery technologies, or any one of them, even a potential solution to the problem of making a mostly wind/solar electricity grid work without fossil fuel backup? Again, you will not find any mention at those links, or at other government or advocate sites discussing the issue of how many of these batteries would be necessary and at what cost to actually fully back up a predominantly wind/solar grid and make it into a functional 24/7/365 electricity system. Indeed, you will not find any mention at any such sites of the fundamental problem with all batteries as the means to back up an intermittently-supplied grid, as identified in the big (and otherwise badly flawed) Royal Society energy storage report that came out in September. That problem is that stored energy as the backup mechanism entails engineering requirements that no battery can ever meet. Those include: holding at least several months of average usage, being capable of keeping that energy in storage for years in anticipation of worst-case once every multiple decades wind “droughts,” and being capable of discharging over the course of months if not a full year. The “10+ hours of duration” mentioned as the goal of the Energy Department’s battery program is almost trivial against the real engineering requirements.

Hydrogen, by contrast, has the theoretical capability of meeting all of those engineering requirement. However, there are many elements that don’t currently exist that would be needed to make a fully-functioning wind/solar/hydrogen storage 24/7/365 electricity grid. These include not just the electrolyzers, but also storage for huge amounts of hydrogen (underground caverns?), a full collection of thermal power plants capable of meeting peak demand burning pure hydrogen, and a transport system (pipelines?) to take the hydrogen from the electrolyzers to the storage caverns and then on to the power plants.

I could do a back-of-the-envelope calculation on this to get a rough idea as to cost, which would come to a multiple (not necessarily a huge one, but nonetheless a multiple) of what our current electricity system costs. But I’m not going to do it. The reason I’m not going to do it is that there as an obvious fact that tells you all you need to know, which is that no one in the country is spending their own private money to build out this system. They are all waiting for the government handouts. If this system could be built profitably at a cost competitive with what we have, there would be investors falling all over themselves to build it. When Thomas Edison built his first electricity plant, he did not go to the government for handouts to build it.

Because this is all a fantasy kept alive by government handouts, as soon as the handouts go away or even slow down, the whole thing will dry up and fade away.

Like this:

Like Loading…

Related

Jupiter’s ocean moons capture most of our attention because of their potential habitability. But Io, Jupiter’s bad-boy volcanic moon, is in a class of its own. There’s nothing else like it in the Solar System, and NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured new images of the volcanic satellite during its closest approach yet.

Io is Jupiter’s third-largest moon and the Solar System’s fourth largest moon. It’s also larger than our Moon. It has the highest density and the strongest gravity of any moon. Io also has the least amount of water of any astronomical object in the Solar System.

Io is the fourth largest moon in the Solar System, but its volcanic activity is what sets it apart. Image Credit: Wikipedia

Those characteristics alone make it interesting. But what really garners Io so much attention, and led Juno to study it more closely, is its volcanic activity. It’s the most geologically active body in the Solar System and boasts over 400 volcanoes, along with widespread lava flows.

Juno’s JunoCam instrument captured new images of Io from its closest approach yet on October 15th, from less than 12,000 km away. Now, citizen scientists have processed these images and shared them with the rest of us. The result is the best images of Io we’ve seen since the Galileo mission ended 20 years ago.

This image comes to us from Kevin Gill, a well-known processor of JunoCam images and other space images. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

We have NASA’s foresight to thank for these images. When they were planning the Juno mission, they found room for JunoCam. JunoCam is primarily a public engagement instrument, though it does help provide context for the spacecraft’s more rigorous science instruments. The camera was intended to capture images for citizen scientists and other skilled—or amateur—image processors to have fun with.

It’s working as intended.

Navaneeth Krishnan created this IO false-color image from the raw image captured by JunoCam on October 15, 2023. Image Credit: NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Navaneeth Krishnan S © CC BY

Io’s widespread volcanic activity have shaped and reshaped its surface. The surface is restless, inhospitable, even tortured. The lava flows and volcanoes make it appear like a throwback to the Solar System’s early days, when Earth and possibly the Moon and other bodies were magma oceans. And with it’s sulfur-covered plains, comparisons with Hell are unavoidable.

Spacecraft have captured several of Io’s eruptions over the years, and their scale is truly awesome. Some of them reach 400 km (250 miles) high.

These Galileo images show two different episodes of volcanic eruptions and their plumes. The image on the left shows two plumes, one in blue on the moon’s limb, and a more difficult to see one in the center near the terminator line. The image on the right shows another eruption from Pillan Patera in 1997 as the expanding red circle with the dark spot in the center. Image Credit: (L) By NASA’s Galileo spacecraft – Public Domain. (R) NASA/JPL

Just for fun, here’s a Juno infrared image showing the moon’s extensive volcanic activity.

The Juno mission’s infrared view of the Jovian moon Io. Taken on July 5, 2022. All the hotspots are volcanic features. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

Juno’s not finished with Io yet. It’s getting progressively closer to the volcanic moon. During Perijoves 57 and 58, on December 3rd and February 24th respectively, it’ll perform two more Io flybys, each one closer than the last.

February 24th’s flyby should be spectacular. It’ll come to within 1500 km (930 miles) of the moon, giving us our most detailed images yet. Though Juno’s main job is to study Jupiter, this close approach to Io should be one of the mission’s highlights.

You could circle the date on your calendar, but that’s probably not necessary. It’ll be difficult to go on the web without seeing the images.

Like this:

Like Loading…