Low-Cost Turbopump for Expendable Launch Technology

Extremely low-cost, lightweight, and high performance expendable upper stages are critical to meeting DARPAs goals for low-cost launch.Engines are the most expensive element of the upper stage, and the turbopump is the most expensive component of the engine.The proposed research will develop and demonstrate a design and manufacturing approach that reduces cost more than an order-of-magnitude while retaining state-of-the-art high performance and lowering weight by exploiting modern physics-based design and analysis tools and low-cost manufacturing technologies. The turbopump was designed and analyzed in Phase I.In Phase II, the turbopump will be manufactured and tested.The proposed research will develop and demonstrate this manufacturing technology and validate the approach with cryogenic testing, and result in an extremely low-cost turbopump for an XS-1 expendable upper stage.The ability to develop a state-of-the-art turbopump within the schedule and funding constraints of an SBIR will demonstrate the revolutionary step-change necessary to achieve high-performance and extremely low-cost expendable upper stages.