Sure, a 3-D printed car is cool, but it doesn't go to space. And
there's probably a good reason for that, but now a competition is
aiming to launch the newest manufacturing fad into the final frontier
by challenging people to design 3-D printed rocket engines.
As in many other fields, 3-D printing is the latest DIY obsession in
space, with people looking to print everything from moon bases to
astronaut meals. The 3D Rocket Engine Design Challenge asks
competitors to envision an engine capable of sending a small payload,
like a 10-kg nanosat, into orbit. Designers will work in an online
environment called Sunglass and can collaborate with others around the
world. The plan is to print the projects in a stainless steel 3-D
printer, and the top three designs will share $10,000 in prizes. The
competition will officially open at SXSW on Mar. 9.
The sponsors behind the 3-D rocket engine challenge, Sunglass and a
company called DIYRockets, hope to spur innovative ideas for space
travel and bring down manufacturing costs. Whether the contest will
actually produce something or is just another buzzword-filled
presentation at SXSW remains to be seen.
Bringing 3-D printing to rocketry isn't entirely new. NASA has some
3-D printers working to reduce the cost of new parts for its upcoming
giant heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. Using laser beams,
their engineers fuse fine layers of metal powder to create a fully
functioning part. A small company called Rocket Moonlighting has built
and fired petite engines made from a 3-D printer. Hobbyists are also
harnessing 3-D printers to make traditional toy rockets with
firecracker engines, some of which look like they sprung from the
imagination of a pulp sci-fi writer.
Of course, this is rocket science. Designers for the 3-D rocket engine
challenge will need to have a good understanding of fluid dynamics,
heat flow, engineering, and physics to make sure their finished models
don't explode in a tiny, adorable fireball. Because of this, the
competition hopes to call on a wide variety of people and, using
Sunglass, allow them to work on different designs together.
"It will be like a GitHub environment, where you can have these 3D
projects and people visiting the site can see them, comment, and
collaborate, " said Kaustuv DeBiswas, CEO of Sunglass.
Darlene Damm, co-CEO of DIYRockets, said that 3-D printed engines
could be dramatically cheaper than existing models. Yet the most
successful new rocket company, SpaceX, has only managed to reduce
NASA's costs by about a third, according to an independent assessment
(.pdf). Not bad, but space remains expensive for the foreseeable
future. Really opening it up to a huge number of people will require
getting costs down a tenth or more or their current place.
Rocket engines are a mature technology and most experts say that new
designs won't offer much more than tweaks to existing products. SpaceX
gained most of their cost savings from designing and manufacturing
products in house rather than outsourcing to subcontractors. Their
rocket engines have some new elements but are still more or less
traditional. Teams involved in the contest will also need to come up
with several thousand dollars to print a finished model, though one of
the competition's sponsors is offering a small sum of $500 to help
towards that goal.
wired
No comments:
Post a Comment