External resources

FAA Commercial Guidelines (USA)

• FAA Guide to Verifying Safety-Critical Structures for Reusable Launch and Reentry Vehicles (2005)  Some basic minimum design and safety factors.

European Guidelines and Standards, and unified standard initiatives

• ECSS – European Cooperation for Space Standardisation: After registration (also possible as a private individual) you get access to the relevant Active and superseded Standards – Active Engineering handbooks, Active Product Assurance Handbooks, and Technical Memorandi that are made available.

• ESCC – European Space Components Coordination: Documents and procedures -Based in Noordwijk, the Netherlands  (Electrical, electronic and electro-mechanical (EEE) components play an essential role in the functional performance, quality, life cycle and costs of space systems.  The goal of the ESCC is to improve the availability of strategic EEE space components at affordable costs for institutional and commercial space programmes by harmonising the resources and development efforts for space components in the ESA Member States and by providing a single and unified system for the standardisation, product specification, evaluation, qualification, procurement of European EEE space components, certification of components and component manufacturers.

• ASD-EUROSPACE (ASD is AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe – formerly AECMA). Eurospace is the trade association of the European Space Industry. It is a non-profit European organisation created in 1961. Eurospace member companies today represent 90% of the total turnover of the European Space Industry. Eurospace fosters the development of space activities in Europe and promotes a better understanding of space industry related issues and problems. They have several working groups include groups on standardisation

• PPOSS- Planetary Protection of outer solar system ==> European Commission funded H2020 Project to create THE INTERNATIONAL PLANETARY PROTECTION HANDBOOK. PPOSS will collect and assemble the information required to describe the rationales, the state-of-the-art and good practices to implement planetary protection requirements in the form of a handbook.This handbook will include a historical perspective, up-to-date implementation measures used today, identification of problems and how to solve them, lessons learned, and aspects related to international cooperation (i.e. joint missions). The PPOSS handbook will be targeted to agencies, industry and scientific organisations involved in building spacecrafts and payloads with planetary protection constraints, in general and of Outer Solar System Bodies in particular. The handbook will also serve as a reference to educate and train new stakeholders in the domain of planetary protection. It is intended that the PPOSS handbook will represent an international baseline and a globally accepted document, to this end the international dimension and perspective is a core constraint in the production of the handbook. The PPOSS handbook is expected to be available early 2017. (Not yet the case, going through drafting process)
• COSPAR –  COMMITTEE ON SPACE RESEARCH – Has a well known panel on Planetary Protection Policy, which can be found here.

Some Nostalgia: Our first quick ideas as PowerPoint engineers

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(The toroidal Aerospike engine shown is a Firefly design)

You can download this old PowerPoint and a .pdf version below. The difference with the earlier MARVEL version is that today we are designing a Methalox version and have confidence in the Aerospike option. While the older hydro-lox version would be more powerful, it comes with some disadvantages on deep space missions. You could potentially produce hydrogen and liquid hydrogen while in space from a large H2O supply you have to carry along, which makes it into a versatile propellant; the issue I became most concerned about, once opting for carbon fiber, is the embrittlement the deep cryogenic H causes to materials which endangers the longevity of your structures. Not a good idea when they can be in deep space for over a decade. (NASA retired the composite deep cryogenic issues for short missions, but the tech is not demonstrated for longer mission types).

Also, we made reference of using Flash Bainite steel, a very promising lightweight metallic solution and easy to work with. Unfortunately it would take too much time and expense to qualify it for space applications. Carbon Fiber it will be. The performance of Methalox is somewhere in between that of Kerosene and Hydrogen, but still very powerful. After some optimizations, we noticed we can do everyone of the missions with Methane + having the longevity advantages. Refueling in orbit would double or even triple its ability to send and land payload on MARS in one mission. In reality all versions of MARVEL would have been powerful enough for a 20 metric ton up-down-up ferry capability once refueled on MARS. MARVEL is a true SSTO-and-back in the Mars environment and this was always the real driver for our single-engine-stage-aerospike configuration.

Methane is a much more benign cryogenic and you have less issues with materials, furthermore it locks into the industry trend to develop Methalox engines in Europe, Japan, Russia and USA. This guarantees the existence of a future workforce and supplier network we could potentially cooperate with. The option of using propane has been eliminated for the same reasons.

For real PowerPoint space madness, you can download this quirky animated presentation: MARVEL 2015 Short overview

MARVEL Website Proposal_EN_v2

General Poster of the SSTO vehicle

Why not share a poster of our poster child?

Newer vehicle version (private account)

Papers fit for reprint

(private account)

Press Kit

(private account)

Funding milestones to be reached

(private account)

Intellectual Property

(private account)

Vision: The 2025 Interplanetary Network

Children’s poster to understand Delta-V requirements between destinations in the Earth-Moon-Mars-Venus econosphere

With today’s launch & module prices a vision for a “2025 Interplanetary Network” has become an affordable and profitable Business Proposition

Earlier engine study

CRDE mini-milagro design study. It concerns a design inspired on a Continuous Rotational Detonation Engine comprising an optimization study on plug/nozzle design – Credit (C) ONESTAGETOSPACE

Heat Shield study