Ursa Major
Ripley engine on test stand at Ursa Major HQ.
Rocket engine and motor manufacturer Ursa Major has developed a process which leans on additive manufacturing and a product-agnostic tooling system to rapidly produce multiple scalable solid rocket motors (SRM).
Solid rocket motors are used on air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles, as well as on model rockets and boosters for satellite launches, and mix together fuel and oxidiser into a solid propellant.
Ursa Major's 'Lynx' approach has been designed to address America’s SRM shortage by utilising 3D printing technology to manufacture multiple motors quicker and more affordably, while also outperforming legacy systems. Ursa Major was founded in 2015 by former SpaceX and Blue Origin propulsion engineer Joe Laurienti, with the company being awarded its first engine contract for a space launch vehicle in 2016. It has since developed several engine products and delivered its first copper-based 3D printed engine components last year.
With Lynx, Ursa Major is vying to ‘redefine a market plagued by a broken supply chain.’ The company believes traditional SRM production lines are difficult to re-tool, expensive to ramp up, and dependant on a significant workforce to operate, leading to inefficiencies in the manufacture of products.
Lynx is being marketed as an approach that doesn’t require re-tooling or retraining, while also being propellant agnostic. This will allow Ursa Major to work with the Department of Defence, as well as incumbent SRM manufacturers, to restore inventories with its SRMs. Data from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies suggest that depleted inventories of munitions that rely on SRMs – like Javelins, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, and Stingers – will take between 5-18 years to replace if the USA continues to rely on traditional production techniques.
According to Ursa Major, one of its additive manufacturing machines can print over 1,650 man-portable motor casings in a year versus a current surge production rate for Javelin of 2,100 per year. With Lynx, Ursa Major also suggests casings can be changed over with one click, while its manufacture approach is applicable to motors ranging from 2-22.5 inches in diameter – making it suitable for producing the motors of commonly used missile systems like Stingers, GMLRS, and air defence systems. Additionally, Lynx SRMs have been designed to carry more propellant using the same engine footprint and is said to have reduced labour intensive manufacturing processes so as to significantly reduce part count and simplify the assembly process.
“Ursa Major is offering a new way to scale production of SRMs,” commented Ursa Major Founder and CEO Joe Laurienti. “Lynx meets the defence industry’s need for a faster, cheaper, scalable, and flexible SRM production process that results in better-performing solid rocket motors. We’ve adapted our extensive experience in additive manufacturing, materials development, and propulsion production to the most pressing problems facing the SRM industry. The result is an adaptable manufacturing process that is designed to mass produce multiple systems, rapidly switching from one model to another, producing reliable SRMs quickly and at scale, while leaving room to collaborate across the industry on energetics.”
Ursa Major says it is currently developing the core technology with the intent to scale the product to multiple motor sizes and applications over the next year. It comes as many defence contractors are looking for alternative suppliers after continued consolidation in the rocket motor industry.
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