News and Updates

June 2004 - Environmental Aeroscience Corporation (eAc) is pleased to be a part of the Paul Allen/Scaled Composites team in the development of the first private manned space capability. eAc competed for and won the contract to develop and supply the rocket motor’s oxidizer fill/vent/dump system. Scaled selected eAc’s products to enhance their goal of developing a safe space vehicle at the minimum possible flight operating cost. We look forward to furthering our participation that will lead to a new industry of affordable space tourism. “The eAc motor components met our specifications and allowed us to meet our goals”, said Burt Rutan, at the event that demonstrated the emergence of privately-developed manned space flight capability.

Environmental Aeroscience Corp
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November 2003 - Environmental Aeroscience Corporation (eAc) was awarded one of 9 contracts for the DARPA Falcon Program. eAc teamed up with Exquadrum as team leader and Cesaroni Technology Inc (CTI), to propose a creative new Hybrid Rocket design to meet the design requirements of the Falcon Project. The vehicle named "Kestrel" will be capable of placing 1000 lbs to orbit for less than $5 Million per launch. eAc was also awarded an AFRL phase one contract to start development of their "MuLV" Micro Launch Vehicle designed as the world's smallest orbital launch vehicle with a payload to orbit of 350 Lbs. Sub-scale testing under this current contract has demonstrated a LOX/HTPB hybrid with a delivered sea level Isp of over 240 seconds with a 20K thrust demonstrator in development for firing early next year. The AFRL "MuLV" and the DARPA "Kestrel" are complimentary innovative technologies, either one with the potential of placing satellites or a small manned capsule into orbit.

eAc is continuing its efforts into the space tourism arena and will be making an announcement in the near future. "With the Scaled Motor competition so close, we were disappointed at the decision regarding the Rutan SS1 propulsion system" Said Korey Kline Director of R&D for Environmental Aeroscience. "With the award of the Falcon Project, along with the MuLV contract, eAc remains the leading innovator in Hybrid Propulsion."

eAc personnel pioneered the development of Nitrous Oxide Hybrid motors back in '89 and commercialized the technology into the HPR propulsion system "Hypertek" with several patent awards. The High Power Rocketry community has flown over ten thousand of the systems currently marketed by Cesaroni Technology Inc.

eAc has also been working a small government contract with aerospike nozzles. Aerospike nozzles are designed to be altitude compensating and self adjust the expansion ratio making them extremely useful for ground-launched sounding rockets. This feature is specifically useful for long burn hybrid rocket applications. Several design verification tests have occurred using short burn solid propellants, with the goal of applying the technology to the long burn Hybrid motors.

eAc is working with two commercial organizations to launch two sounding rockets, one to 100K feet and the second 350K feet. Florida Institute of Technology will be building a boosted dart payload as part of their continuing engineering graduate program for the first flight. An undisclosed second customer will be developing inflatable re-entry ballute technologies on the second sounding rocket flight, in support of the Peacestar project.

Environmental Aeroscience Corp
SPACE... We'll get you there!
K2

September 2003 - Environmental Aeroscience Corp. (eAc) would like to thank Burt Rutan and the "Angel Investor" for the opportunity to participate in this historic attempt at civilian space flight. While we regret not being able to play a more significant roll in this project, we are pleased with the ground testing that was conducted and the selection of our forward bulkhead assembly for use on SpaceShipOne. We have the highest confidence that the SpaceShipOne team will successfully place a civilian into space and open this frontier for everyone.

While the press coverage of the program has been significant, one thing missing is a listing of the people who are making this all possible. There are always a handful of dedicated engineers that are directly responsible for making someone's dream come true. These engineers make things happen and are key with any project of this significance. eAc would like to specifically congratulate the winning propulsion team lead by Frank Macklin with engineering support from Chris Grainger, Mike Veno, Jeff Hickerson, Harvey Jewett. Good job guys, it was a close competition; prove to the world that Hybrids are the best choice for civilian space applications!

eAc is a very small innovative company and is proud to have its roots in the amateur/experimental rocketry world. eAc pioneered the use of Nitrous as an oxidizer for Hybrid propulsion in 1989 and flew the first Hybrid sounding rocket "Hyperion" to a record setting altitude in 1996. For eAc as a team, having been selected as one of the two vendors in this competition was quite an honor. We were successful in all ground firings, and exceeded all performance requirements. To have competed to a near tie with a California-based publicly-traded satellite manufacturer with four times the employees and significantly greater resources, gives me great confidence that space is no longer only the realm of big business. We participated in this program because of our love of rockets and space travel, not for market share, stock value or notoriety. We believe that other grass roots teams of dreamers and builders will also have a significant affect in the future of space flight. "We are truly in the Wright Brothers' days of Civilian Space flight."

Early in the program Scaled selected the eAc developed forward bulkhead assembly. eAc has successfully designed and operated simple and innovative Nitrous Oxide systems since 1994. Our bulkhead design was based on these many test firings and flight experiences. Scaled Composites was confident of the design and therefore readily selected a single vendor for this sub-system. This assembly allows the oxidizer tank to be filled, vented, and dumped remotely with N2O in a lightweight reliable package. Along with our hearts and dreams, we at least know that we have some small part in the historic X-Prize attempts by SpaceShipOne. eAc will continue to innovate new propulsion systems for future manned space travel and other orbital applications.

I would also like to thank the eAc team for giving a significant part of their lives to this project for the past 24 months. Derek Deville- System Integration and Ignition; Debbie Sifford- Project Management; Alex Espinosa- Flight Motor Controller and Valve design; Ed Ampuero- Bulkhead and Injector design. A special thanks to Kevin Smith and Tom Bales for their futuristic vision and financial backing to support eAc during this long program.

Korey R Kline
Propulsion Designer
Vice President of R&D

eAc specializes in the development, fabrication, and testing of innovative hybrid rocket hardware with a focus on Nitrous Oxide and Liquid Oxygen hybrid rocket motors for tactical missiles, small orbital launch vehicles, and space tourism applications. eAc has recorded over 1000 hybrid firings since its establishment in 1994, demonstrating burn times up to 50 seconds and full throttling capabilities. eAc founders fired the first Nitrous Oxide/HTPB hybrids in early 1989 and had the worlds first Nitrous oxide hybrid rocket flight in 1994.

eAc is currently conducting developmental firings of a 16" diameter Nitrous hybrid that will be the upper stage in their MuLV small launch vehicle, capable of placing 500 lb payloads into low earth orbit. Their early firings have consistently produced over 11,000 lbs thrust, which is currently the highest thrust level ever achieved by a nitrous hybrid.

The Hyperion program is partially funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). DARPA also funded the Hybrid Propulsion Demonstration Program (HPDP) that was conducted by a consortium of government and industry. The flight of eAc's Hyperion I sounding rocket was a part of their participation in the HPDP program. These were the first hybrids to be flown from a NASA facility. A total of four Hyperions were flown from the Wallops Flight Facility in 1996 reaching altitudes is excess of 20 miles.

Hybrids rocket motors have long been desirable for providing safe and simple propulsion compared to the more hazardous solids motors and complex liquid systems. Hybrid propulsion offers throttleability and performance nearly equivalent to liquid rockets, with a design simplicity similar to solids. These attributes offer important advantages in performance and safety compared with solid rocket motors, at a fraction of the price of a liquid propulsion system. Hybrid rockets for commercial applications have been underutilized to date; however new developments are bringing hybrid rocket technologies into practice.

April 2003 - Environmental Aeroscience Corporation (eAc) announces selection as a team member providing the hybrid rocket propulsion system for Burt Rutan's Manned Space Program.

Founded in 1994, eAc has pioneered the development of nitrous oxide hybrid propulsion including the first ever sounding rocket flight of such a system from a NASA launch facility. eAc has been designing, testing, and flying hybrid rocket motors for tactical missiles, sounding rockets, and satellite launch applications; and with this announcement, space tourism. After two years of secret development with Scaled Composites, we are proud to announce our involvement as a vendor for the propulsion system for SpaceShipOne.

We are excited to have participated in the unveiling of this historic program on Friday, April 18, 2003. "Even though they are a tiny company … they've fired over a thousand hybrid motors, and that's why they were selected," said Burt Rutan at the event. Korey Kline, eAc Director of R&D was quoted as saying "These are the Wright Brothers days of Civilian Space Flight."

Several developmental firings at our test facility in Miami were conducted in support of the SpaceShipOne propulsion system. The experiences of the South Florida testing allowed eAc to bring to Scaled a functional and proven system resulting in the efficient execution of the first successful static test in Mojave. eAc's forward bulkhead with the SpaceShipOne oxidizer filling and vent systems was selected and qualified thru a competition with another vendor and will be used for all ground and flight testing. The hybrid rocket design represents the state of the art in low recurring cost nitrous oxide hybrid propulsion for space tourism applications.

eAc is currently working on advanced hybrid propulsion developments with AFRL and DARPA, including the world's smallest orbital launch vehicle, the MuLV. The MuLV is a safe, responsive, and affordable launch system that will carry 350-1200lb payloads into low earth orbit. A turbo-pump fed 30,000 lb thrust common-core booster design is used to lower development costs. A single motor system is designed and used for the central booster motor, with a variety of combinations of strap-on boosters of the same design. The lifting capacity is determined by this first stage configuration. Developmental firings include a 16" diameter nitrous hybrid that has produced 11,000 lbs thrust levels. The first series of nine test firings on this scale have been very successful allowing us to fine-tune the fuel grain geometry and injector design.