Hand-out Ursa Major
EOS M 400 at Ursa Major's Advanced Manufacturing Lab in Youngstown, Ohio.
Rocket propulsion company Ursa Major’s Advanced Manufacturing Lab in Youngstown, Ohio, where its EOS laser powder bed fusion 3D printer (left) produces rocket engine components on demand. Technician Ty Barzak setting up for a new build (right).
Ursa Major, the only privately funded company in the USA that focuses solely on rocket propulsion, delivered its first copper-based 3D printed rocket engine combustion chambers out of its Advanced Manufacturing lab in Youngstown, Ohio.
3D printing allows Ursa Major to speed up engine production and apply improvements gleaned from testing in real time, lowering costs. Ursa Major's rocket engines are more than 80 percent 3D printed by mass and primarily built and tested in its Berthoud, Colorado headquarters. The copper alloy-based engine components will be tested for space launch and hypersonic applications.
The production and delivery cycle has now been cut down to one month, compared to the minimum six-month process that was previously in place when using traditional manufacturing processes.
“Speed is of the essence when it comes to producing rocket engines right now because lack of propulsion is causing a significant bottleneck in U.S. access to space and hypersonics testing,” said Joe Laurenti, founder and CEO of Ursa Major.
In October 2021, The Ursa Major Advanced Manufacturing Lab began with 3 million USD in federal financial support from U.S. Rep Tim Ryan and Department of Defense-backed manufacturing innovation institute America Makes.
“Ursa Major’s goal to help establish the U.S. as a global supplier of rocket propulsion is in line with our efforts to foster domestic innovation and manufacturing across industries in Ohio,” said Rep. Tim Ryan. “I’m pleased that Youngstown is home to this state-of-the-art facility that will ultimately help the U.S. regain its leadership in space and hypersonic technologies.”
The facility is equipped with an EOS large-format laser powder bed fusion 3D printer designed to make on-demand components for Ursa Major rocket engines. It is located in the Youngstown Business Incubator, an internationally recognised program focused on the development of software and additive manufacturing companies in the region.
John Wilczynski, Executive Director of America Makes said: “Succesful projects like this are part of a resurgence in American manufacturing that helps strengthen our domestic supply chain.”
The Advanced Manufacturing Lab accelerates the engine development process, allowing Ursa Major to rapidly iterate on design adjustments in-house to improve engine performance and reliability. The lab was used to rapidly redesign Ursa Major’s “Ripley” from a 35,000 to 50,000-pound thrust engine in order to meet market demand.
Technical lessons learned from Ripley aided in the development and testing of the companies two other rocket engine programs, the “Hadley,” a 5000-pound thrust, oxygen-rich staged combustion engine used in small launch and hypersonics, and the recently announced 200,000-pound thrust “Arroway” designed for medium and heavy launch.
Ursa Major’s flexible rocket engines can be used for a range of missions, from air launch to hypersonic flight to on-orbit missions with many restarts. The company’s customers get to launch many years faster and without the development cost of building engines in-house.
Ursa Major has built and tested more than 50 staged-combustion rocket engines to date and its engines have accumulated more than 36,000 seconds of run time, higher than the typical engine is tested prior to first flight.
