U.S. Rocket Propulsion Company Ursa Major Announces New Engine to Displace Now Unavailable Russian-Made Propulsion Sources
Available for Order Now, “Arroway” is a 200,000-Pound Thrust Reusable Liquid Oxygen and Methane Staged Combustion Engine for Medium and Heavy Launch
DENVER (Ursa Major PR) — Ursa Major, America’s only privately funded company that focuses solely on rocket propulsion, today introduced the latest in its line of engines. Arroway is a 200,000-pound thrust liquid oxygen and methane staged combustion engine that will serve markets including current U.S. national security missions, commercial satellite launches, orbital space stations, and future missions not yet conceived. The reusable Arroway engine is available for order now, slated for initial hot-fire testing in 2023, and delivery in 2025.
Notably, Arroway engines will be one of very few commercially available engines that, when clustered together, can displace the Russian-made RD-180 and RD-181, which are no longer available to U.S. launch companies.
“Arroway is America’s engine of the future,” said Joe Laurienti, founder and CEO of Ursa Major. “Medium and heavy launch capacity is what U.S. launchers desperately need right now, and because Ursa Major focuses solely on propulsion, we’re in a unique position to deliver high-performing, reliable, and affordable engines to meet the increasing market demand, just like we are doing with ‘Hadley’ and ‘Ripley’.”
Arroway uses a fuel-rich staged combustion architecture with liquid oxygen and methane propellants. Ursa Major designed the components and their arrangement so that most of the engine can be 3D printed. This approach allows for rapid iteration during the development process as well as efficient scaling of production to meet market demand.
Advantages of Liquid Methane Fuel
- Cleaner-burning, more efficient, and lower cost than kerosene
- Offers flexible architecture options to optimize for reusability
- Increasing market adoption in the launch industry
Advantages of Fuel-Rich Staged Combustion Architecture
- High performance on specific impulse and thrust-to-weight ratio
- Suitable for high reliability in mass production, long reusable life, and multiple applications
- Leverages Ursa Major’s experience in closed-cycle technology and provides extensibility to future propellant derivatives
Ursa Major’s other engines include “Hadley,” a 5,000-pound thrust, oxygen-rich staged combustion engine, and the 50,000-pound thrust “Ripley” engine. Hadley was the first American-made oxygen-rich staged combustion engine to be hot fire tested.
“Arroway is the rocket engine that the industry needs, and Ursa Major is the right company to build it,” said Jeff Thornburg, former SpaceX propulsion executive and Ursa Major advisor. “Launch organizations should consider whether they have the in-house experience, expertise, time, money, test facilities, and organizational fortitude to build their own engines. Ursa Major has demonstrated all of that, and the result is a more rapid and robust product to market. The growing space industry is just starting to learn how difficult propulsion development can be and how long it really takes to qualify hardware in-house, which presents an incredible opportunity for Arroway to serve the industry.”
No Need to Build In-House
With Ursa Major’s experience making flexible rocket engines that can be used for a range of missions, from air launch, to hypersonic flight, to on-orbit missions with many restarts, its customers get to launch many years faster at a low price and without the development cost of building engines in-house.
The Ursa Major propulsion engineering team has more than 1,000 years of propulsion development experience and thousands of successful flights. It includes world-leading experts in combustors, engine cycles, and turbomachinery from the top American launch companies and engine development programs in the U.S. The company has built and tested more than 50 staged-combustion rocket engines to date and will deliver 24 of them by year’s end.
Ursa Major designs, tests, and manufactures its engines from its state-of-the-art facility in Berthoud, Colorado, using market-leading technology in analysis and simulation, 3D printing, and proprietary alloys. To date, Ursa Major engines have accumulated 36,000 seconds of run-time, far more than a typical engine is tested prior to first flight.
About Ursa Major
Ursa Major is America’s only privately funded company that focuses solely on rocket propulsion, bringing high-performance, staged combustion engines to market for space launch and hypersonic applications. Ursa Major customers, ranging from “New Space” startups to enterprise-level aerospace leaders and the U.S. government, get to launch faster, more reliably, and cost-effectively. The company employs the most sought-after engineers from top space programs and universities and is backed by world-class investors including XN and Explorer 1 Fund. Headquartered in Berthoud, Colorado, Ursa Major was named one of the best places to work by Built in Colorado two years in a row. For more information, visit www.ursamajor.com.
17 responses to “U.S. Rocket Propulsion Company Ursa Major Announces New Engine to Displace Now Unavailable Russian-Made Propulsion Sources”
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Okay, we can start thinking of setting Rocketdyne loose into the wilds. It’ll be time to cut them off the corporate welfare stream.
FYI. Rocketdyne is now part of Aerojet Rockerdyne.
And they will be on the corporate welfare stream as long as someone is using the RL-10 and the RS-25 HydroLox engines.
I think RL-10 can survive on the commercial marketplace. But yes, the welfare won’t just stop. But I think the open ended prospect of it will end with the advent of market surviving engine providers. I think this concept will have legs and work.
That would be nice, assuming competition to Aerojet’s electric propulsion business is also available.
There are certainly a metric buttload of small thruster makers now out there.
Ursa Major has had trouble finding customers. ABL was going to use their engines, then decided it would roll its own after all. The only Ursa customer I know of is Jim Cantrell’s Phantom Space. The Arroway is a nice looking engine, but it’s not exactly a drop-in crate motor anent an RD-180 or RD-181. I hope Ursa Major lasts too, but I’m not super-confident that it will.
RS-25 won’t outlast SLS and that puppy is not long for this world. The RL-10 will likely last awhile longer, but it doesn’t need AJR to do that. The RL-10 has had a lot of different corporate logos on it over the decades. A new one won’t be any big deal.
Agree, a new corporate logo for the RL-10 isn’t a big deal. The question is how much will it take for Aerojet Rocket to relinquished the RL-10 to someone else.
Best guess? Bankruptcy.
How about something in the 2 million pound thrust range? Please.
Even better, two thrust chambers totaling 4 million plus fed by a single set of turbopumps?
The ideal configuration for a SHLV is 4 thrust chambers and a central smaller landing engine.
I wish them well but I’m not sure I can think of any potential customers for this product. Relativity and RocketLab are building similarly sized methalox engines. There’s no reason to imagine they wouldn’t sell them to interested third parties.
I clench when I read “methalox” and “kerolox” after enduring years of spacex fools blathering those two NewSpace buzzwords.
Northrop Grumman might be interested in the Arroway engine for an Antares replacement. If they want to stay in the liquid launcher market along with getting a replacement launcher for the remaining Cygnus flights.
There is only enough Russian RD-181 engines and Ukrainian first stages on hand for 2 more Antares launches.
They would need to build an entire new rocket to replace the Antares due to fuel difference. Orbital ATK was the company that made the initial gamble to build Antares not NG.
Think it was Orbital Science that replaces Rocketplane Kistler who failed to raised enough private funding early in the original COTS program.
Likely that the nonavailability of large Russian KeroLox engines for the foreseeable future. Will see a switch to large MethoLox engines which helps with rocket reuse.
Regardless, Northrop Grumman will have to decide how they are launching the Cygnus after the remaining two Antares has flown. The possibilities included Vulcan Centaur, New Glenn, Firefly Beta, Neutron and something inhouse. Presuming NG will passed on their competitor from Hawthorne.
Not necessarily. NorGrum is barely a competitor to SpaceX. And NorGrum has used SpaceX to launch things before. As none of the rockets you named as possible Antares successors are yet in service, it could well be the case that F9 gets the job until at least one of those other rockets is flying.
I don’t think it would be worth the expense to NorGrum to develop another booster just for Cygnus. If the notional beastie had some commercial potential that would be different. But NorGrum doesn’t seem to know how to do anything but cost-plus rockets. Far cheaper just to buy rides for Cygnus on F9s, Vulcans or Neutrons once the Antares bites the dust.