Tyler Gibson, left, and Allison Clark, RAMPT engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AlabamaPaul Gradl, who works at
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, and is the co-principal investigator of NASA’s RAMPT (Rapid Analysis and Manufacturing Propulsion Technology) project, says this is at the cutting-edge of additive manufacturing (AM) and helping the agency and industry produce new alloys and AM parts.
“Across NASA’s storied legacy of vehicle and hardware design, testing, and integration, our underlying strength is in our application of extremely durable and severe-environment materials and innovative manufacturing for component design. We strive to fully understand the microstructure and properties of every material and how they will ultimately be used in components before we make them available to industry for flight applications.”
Since its inception, RAMPT has conducted 500 test-firings of 3-D printed injectors, nozzles, and chamber hardware totalling more than 16,000sec, using newly developed extreme-environment alloys, large-scale additive manufacturing processes, and advanced composite technology. The project has also started developing a full-scale version for the RS-25 engine (also known as the Space Shuttle Main Engine — SSME), which experts say could reduce its costs by up to 70% and cut manufacturing time in half.
Mr Gradl continued: “As 3-D printed structures are getting larger and more complex, a major area of interest is the additive manufacturing (AM) print scale. A decade ago, most 3-D printed parts were no bigger than a shoebox. Today, AM researchers are helping the industry produce lighter, more robust, intricately designed rocket engine components 10ft tall and 8ft in diameter.
“NASA, through public-private partnerships, is making these breakthroughs accessible to the commercial space industry to help them rapidly advance new flight technologies of their own. We are solving technical challenges, creating new supply chains for parts and materials, and increasing the industry’s capacity to rapidly deliver reliable hardware that draws a busy commercial space infrastructure ever closer.
“The RAMPT project does not just develop the end technology but the means to fully understand that technology, whatever the application. That means advancing cutting-edge simulation tools that can identify the viability of new alloys and composites at the microstructural level; this entails assessing how they handle the fiery rigors of liftoff, the punishing cold of space, and the dynamic stresses associated with liftoffs, landings, and the long transits between.”
NASA said its strategy to encourage commercial and academic buy-in is to offer public-private partnership opportunities, wherein industry and academia contribute as much as 25% of project development costs, allowing them to reap the benefits. It highlights the development of a refined version of the alloy GRCop42, which helped commercial launch provider Relativity Space, launch the first fully 3-D printed rocket in March 2023.