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Tag: SLS

  • You’re Going To See Cheaper 3D Printers In 2014

    You’re Going To See Cheaper 3D Printers In 2014

    3D printers are expensive. There have been some valiant efforts to bring down prices, but the professional grade SLS desktop 3D printers still cost a couple thousand dollars. That all may change next year.

    Quartz reports that most of the patents for a 3D printing technology called selective laser sintering will expire next year. With its expiration, anybody will be able to make a 3D printer that utilizes this technology without having to pay royalties to the inventor. The hope is that the savings experienced by the 3D printer manufacturers will be passed onto the consumer.

    It’s pointed out by Quartz that this scenario has already played out before. The patents for fused deposition modeling expired a few years ago, and their expiration led to the creation of the Markerbot Cupcake and dozens of other cheap 3D printers. This patent expiration also led to FDM 3D printers going open source which led to an explosion of cheap DIY 3D printer kits popping up all over the place.

    Going back to SLS 3D printing, the expiration of these key patents will hopefully usher in an era of cheap, yet more advanced, 3D printers. Not to knock FDM 3D printers, but SLS 3D printers can print in higher resolutions and in more materials, like metal.

    For more info, check out this video from 3D Systems that discusses SLS 3D printing:

    And if you’re in the mood to try your hand at making your own SLS 3D printer, check out this open source guide from Make Magazine.

  • NASA Tests Liquid Hydrogen/Oxygen Engine For Upcoming Heavy Rocket

    NASA on Thursday tested the powerpack assembly for the J-2X engine, an important component of NASA’s next-generation heavy-lift rocket.

    The J-2X powerpack assembly was test-fired at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The engine will power the upper stage of NASA’s proposed Space Launch System (SLS), a 143-ton rocket that will eventually carry human crews into deep space on the Orion spacecraft. According to NASA, it is the first human-rated liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen engine developed in the U.S. in decades.

    “The determination and focus by teams at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and Stennis on designing and perfecting the J-2X engine helps show the great strides of progress made on the overall program,” said Todd May, SLS Program Manager. “We are inspired to stay the course and pursue our goal of exploring deep space and traveling farther than ever before.”

    The powerpack of the engine has performed 13 tests and burned millions of pounds of propellants this year. It was tested separately from the engine for thoroughness, and under a wider range of conditions. NASA stated that the tests have provided “a trove” of data about the performance of the device’s turbopump and flexible ducts.

    “These tests at Stennis are similar to doctor-ordered treadmill tests for a person’s heart,” said Tom Byrd, J-2X engine lead in the SLS Liquid Engines Office at Marshall in Huntsville, Ala. “The engineers who designed and analyze the turbopumps inside the powerpack are like our doctors, using sensors installed in the assembly to monitor the run over a wide range of stressful conditions. We ran the assembly tests this year for far longer than the engine will run during a mission to space, and acquired a lot of valuable information that will help us improve the development of the J-2X engine.”

    NASA engineers will soon remove the powerpack assembly from its test stand and begin tests of the fully integrated engine. The preparations will need to be complete by 2014, when the uncrewed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) will be launching an Orion capsule flight test.

    (Image courtesy NASA/SSC)

  • NASA Takes Delivery Of Orion Space Capsule

    NASA’s plan for the immediate future is quite simple. Go to the Moon, go to an asteroid, go to Mars. Not in that specific order but that it what we are looking at as the essential missions in the next 30 years for the space agency. Since the retirement of the shuttle the question has continually been, how? Well that question was answered on the 28th when the Orion space capsule was delivered to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center by Lockheed Martin.

    “This starts a new, exciting chapter in this nation’s great space exploration story,” said Lori Garver, NASA deputy administrator. “Today we are lifting our spirits to new heights.”

    The first flight of the spacecraft will take place in 2014 and will be uncrewed. Called Exploration Flight Test-1 or EFT-1, it will be loaded with a wide variety of instruments to evaluate how the spacecraft behaves during launch, in space and the through the searing heat of reentry. This spacecraft will also be the most advanced space craft ever designed with features that include emergency abort capability, sustain astronauts during space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space.

    “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to Mars,” proclaimed U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who joined Garver and other officials to welcome the Orion spacecraft. “We know the Orion capsule is a critical part of the system that’s going to take us there.”

    The capsule will be launched into orbit by the Space Launch System (SLS) and the launch is scheduled to take place in 2017. The SLS is not without controversy though. This is a rocket system that was neither asked for or wanted by NASA but was forced upon them by congress. The huge rocket is capable of lifting up to 130 metric tons to orbit. The current rocket, and the one that will be used for the test flight, the Delta IV-Heavy, is more than powerful enough to get the job done.

    “The systems on this spacecraft, it’s bigger than Apollo and it has to stay in space longer than Apollo, so it has to be better than Apollo,” said Bob Cabana, director of Kennedy and a former shuttle commander.

    For now, the focus for NASA and Lockheed Martin is preparing this capsule for space in 2014. During the EFT-1 mission, a Delta IV-Heavy rocket from United Launch Alliance will lift the spacecraft into orbit. Its second stage will remain attached to the capsule and will be fired to raise the Orion’s orbit to 3,600 miles, about 15 times higher than the International Space Station. The mission will last only a few hours, which is long enough to make two orbits before being sent back into the atmosphere to test it at deep-space reentry speeds.