[HN Gopher] Test firing of a 3D-printed rocket engine designed t...
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Test firing of a 3D-printed rocket engine designed through
computational model
Author : frickinLasers
Score : 142 points
Date : 2024-06-21 14:21 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (leap71.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (leap71.com)
| frickinLasers wrote:
| I shortened the title a bit from "LEAP 71 hot-fires 3D-printed
| liquid-fuel rocket engine designed through Noyron Computational
| Model."
|
| From the article:
|
| - First rocket engine built entirely through a computational
| model without human intervention
|
| - Likely the shortest time from spec to manufacturing for a new
| rocket engine (2 weeks, usually this process takes many months in
| manual engineering using CAD)
|
| - First liquid fueled rocket engine developed in the United Arab
| Emirates
|
| - Engine worked on the first attempt
|
| - No CAD was used in the design
| bee_rider wrote:
| > Likely the shortest time from spec to manufacturing for a new
| rocket engine (2 weeks, usually this process takes many months
| in manual engineering using CAD)
|
| Does anyone in the field of rocketry specifically know if this
| alleviates some previously annoying constraint?
|
| My uninformed gut suspects that these rocket spend an
| overwhelming amount of time in the post-design stage (I mean
| rocket engines seem to stick around for a long, long time,
| right?). But I'm a programmer I don't know anything about this
| stuff.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| A software build used to last the whole night.
| _joel wrote:
| obligatory https://xkcd.com/303/
| bee_rider wrote:
| Exactly, right, I don't trust my intuition here because
| that's seen as an absurdly long time in software, whereas
| in rockets it seems like months and weeks just kinda zoom
| by.
| anamax wrote:
| That's the wrong way to think about it.
|
| "We've built a great new way to design physical structures."
|
| "So what? The existing ways work just fine."
|
| "We designed and built a rocket engine in two days."
|
| However, even in the rocket field, there's a "design,
| simulate, build, test" cycle. They can do two of those steps
| in effectively 0 time and with significantly lower cost.
|
| Moreover, it looks like the design has incremental feedback
| from something akin to simulate.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Who are you quoting? The second speaker in your
| conversation seems to have a pretty negative, incurious,
| and arrogant tone.
| anamax wrote:
| I'm quoting voices in my head having a discussion about
| this.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Where are the performance spec sheets?
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Why downvote? Its a great design, by an ai, it should compete
| with human designs in all the specs?
| dgacmu wrote:
| I didn't downvote you, but it seems like a pretty nitpicky
| question to ask at the "we demonstrated that the thing worked
| and didn't melt" stage.
|
| It shouldn't have to compete - yet. Your question doesn't get
| at the more interesting one, which is, "will it eventually?"
| greesil wrote:
| I suspect they're happy it didn't just blow up.
| 0xfae wrote:
| The second line of the article: "The engine with 5 kN (500 kg /
| 1124 lbf) of thrust, generated the expected 20,000 horsepower"
| echoangle wrote:
| Specific impulse would also be nice, thrust itself isn't very
| impressive
| jameshart wrote:
| I think the impressive thing here is more that they asked
| the computer to design an engine which produced a desired
| amount of thrust, and it did so.
|
| The thing being demonstrated isn't 'we made this engine,
| look how impressive its specs are', it's 'our computer can
| make working engines to spec'
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| That thing looks absolutely alien, or maybe, like something
| evolved organically. Which I suppose it has.
| JofArnold wrote:
| An incredible achievement and in to my eyes a thing of beauty.
| This is not the first time I've seen computational geometry
| (played with it myself) but this output seems something else.
| allenrb wrote:
| This appears to be a pressure-fed rather than pumped engine, so
| limited real-world utility. Nonetheless, it's incredibly
| impressive especially given that it seems to have been successful
| on the first try.
|
| I wonder how practical it might be to integrate turbo machinery
| into an automated design system like this?
|
| Oh, and it really is beautiful with copper construction and that
| fascinating swirl.
| black6 wrote:
| All are pressure fed. A pump generates pressure. It's common to
| test engine components without pumps using high pressure
| vessels in lieu of pumps. The E Complex at Stennis Space Center
| specializes in this approach.
| echoangle wrote:
| Pressure fed is a fixed term when applied to rocket engines
| and means "fed only by the pressure in the tank (which is
| most of the time generated by having a pressurization system
| fed by another high pressure helium tank) and not by a pump".
| cwillu wrote:
| The swirl isn't really an essential part of the rocket design,
| but ports for thermocouples (i.e, temperature sensors).
| p1esk wrote:
| " The engine uses thin cooling channels that swirl around the
| chamber jacket, with a variable cross sections as thin as
| 0.8mm. The Kerosene is pressed through the channels to cool
| the engine and prevent it from melting."
| irjustin wrote:
| > This appears to be a pressure-fed rather than pumped engine,
| so limited real-world utility
|
| This is addressed in the article:
|
| > This is a relatively compact engine, which would be suitable
| for a final kick stage of an orbital rocket.
|
| It has lots of real world application, just not currently as
| part of a lift stage since you're right it's a pressure based
| one as opposed to a pumped engine.
| dotancohen wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, the Falcon 1 used a pressure-fed upper
| stage engine.
| anamax wrote:
| Bonus points for "steely-eyed rocket-woman" although it looks
| like rocket engines are "just" an example/test-case, which makes
| it even more impressive.
| eagerpace wrote:
| Is "engine" appropriate to use here? It seems to just be the
| combustion chamber, similar to the article last week about the
| rocket test in India. It's cool research, but I don't know that
| the engine process matters much when you compare this to what
| SpaceX is doing with their engines and reducing the complexity of
| the moving parts, not just the static ones.
| bumby wrote:
| While the terms can change over time, my understanding in ME
| circles is that "engine" is usually referring something that
| converts a source of energy into a force. So in this case, a
| device is using chemical energy (LOX + kerosene) into thrush
| (5kN) so it would meet the definition of an "engine."
| dotancohen wrote:
| Err... almost. An engine is something that has significant
| engineering effort put into it, you can see that the words
| are cognate. A motor is (usually an engine) that converts
| potential (stored) energy into motion, by way of some force.
| I do believe that motor and motion are also cognate.
|
| But outside the etymologies, there is no standard, agreed
| upon definition for either the term engine nor motor. I
| personally like these etymology-based definitions (otherwise
| how do you excuse the term "siege engine") but it's not a
| hill I'd die on.
| lossolo wrote:
| This sounds interesting "Noyron -- a foundational Large
| Computational Engineering Model". What kind of architecture this
| model have?
| amelius wrote:
| > Noyron is proprietary software, developed by LEAP 71.
|
| I guess nothing to see here.
| evrenesat wrote:
| Remind me when we got an AI designed, 3d printable Dyson sphere.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| > _3D-printed in copper_
|
| Are there consumer-grade 3D printers that can print copper?
|
| Or print a hobby-sized version of a rocket (out of some heat-
| resistant material)?
|
| (I'm thinking about the model rockets you may have had as a kid
| with an A8-3 engine.)
| Filligree wrote:
| Definitely not. If you as a consumer want to do so, then your
| best bet is printing a mold for casting.
| progre wrote:
| Which would rule out any cooling channels inside the bell.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think long term there is no reason for Electrochemical
| Additive Manufacturing (ECAM) to stay expensive as it uses
| TFT display technology which is mature and electroplating
| solution is widely available. Maybe patents will keep it
| expensive.
| justinclift wrote:
| Does it need to be done in a non-reactive atmosphere (ie
| nitrogen) or anything along those lines?
|
| If the failure cases are dangerous (magnesium fire?), then
| the safety precautions might keep it out of general
| consumer availability.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| It builds on normal electroplating which is already a
| safe DIY activity, best not do drink it though.
|
| This is selective electroplating by only applying
| electric current to pixel sized areas and building up the
| object layer by layer like a resin printer. It's truly
| amazing what it can do. It's just really new.
|
| https://fabric8labs.com/
| justinclift wrote:
| Cool. That looks super interesting. :)
| justinclift wrote:
| Made a submission about it, as it looks so interesting:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40803783
| justinclift wrote:
| Seen this? https://youtu.be/W1d36wbx_yg
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I had not, looks cool. I'm gonna wait 10 years and see if
| this (ECAM) gets to Bambu Labs price and quality, if not
| then maybe I'll DIY one.
| dotancohen wrote:
| You could almost certainly source a cylindrical body to pour
| the cast into for cheaper and easier than 3D printing one -
| of almost any dimension. The tricky part is in the coring
| shape (for thrust profile), not the shape of the cylinder.
|
| That said, 3D printing an easily-removable mold for coring,
| such as from wax, would be amazing.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >The engine was designed autonomously without human intervention
|
| Hmmm. My software compiles itself 'without human intervention'
| when I click the compile button (ignoring the thousands of hours
| of work I put into writing the code and the even larger amount of
| work that went into creating the compiler).
| frickinLasers wrote:
| Yes, I can see many similarities.
|
| - Your code specifies design constraints--you need it to do X
| and Y and Z. - The engine designers needed the
| engine to fit in X and operate at Y temperature and not blow up
| (Z).
|
| - The compiler takes your instructions and optimizes them for
| the processor instruction set. - This program
| optimizes the engine design for the physics instruction set.
|
| It seems like both represent huge productivity leaps from
| laboriously making things in the original low-level languages.
| jameshart wrote:
| The AI goalpost movers are at it again.
|
| Computer: generates natural language output in response to
| arbitrary prompts
|
| Programmer: it's just a computer program, it doesn't require
| intelligence to do that. It's not doing rocket science.
|
| Computer: does literal rocket science
|
| Programmer: sure, but it's still just running a computer
| program
| daveguy wrote:
| Awesome demonstration of an exciting development technique. It's
| still proof of concept level at 5kN thrust. For comparison, the
| current Falcon 9 engine (Merlin 1D Vacuum+) has 981 kN thrust.
| LeonM wrote:
| And just to put those numbers further in perspective: the
| current design goal of the SpaceX Raptor engine is 3MN
| (3000kN). Currently they have achieved 2.64MN during ground
| testing. It is speculated that each of the 33 engines of the
| superheavy booster during testflight 4 were configured for a
| thrust of approx 2MN.
|
| Obviously the Raptors are much, much larger than the 3D printed
| engine from the article.
| jameshart wrote:
| If they had asked the computer to design them a 981kN thrust
| engine they might have needed to be a little more cautious
| about lighting it up on a test stand. 5kN seems plenty for a
| first proof of concept.
| eespark wrote:
| I was going to say that this is nothing Hyperganic hasn't
| done....and then looked up Lin and Joesefine who were previously
| at....Hyperganic. I wonder what the story is over there. Open
| sourcing their geometry kernel is a very confident move.
|
| Interested to see what happens between Lab71, Hyperganic and
| nTopology - traditional CAD/CAM packages are integrating topology
| optimisation / generative design but are simply not voxel-first.
| Perhaps there's a middle-ground to be found (though possibly
| requires more developed use cases first).
| ThouYS wrote:
| It's really cool, but the flame profile is that of a blowtorch,
| not a rocket engine
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Yeah, no pretty looking shock diamonds in that exhaust. Which
| makes me thing the exhaust velocity is pretty low, which I'm
| not too surprised by since the throat of that engine looks
| pretty large. And the specific impulse (efficiency) of a rocket
| engine is directly tied to the effective exhaust velocity [0].
|
| Still amazingly cool, but to the other questions on this thread
| I'm sure the performance is not comparable to an existing
| rocket engine design.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_impulse#Specific_impu...
| nja wrote:
| Cool!
|
| > No CAD was used in the design
|
| This is amusing -- while I understand they mean "CAD tools" like
| 3d modeling software, the entire engine was literally "computer-
| aided design", no?
| PROgrammerTHREE wrote:
| yes, I don't think they know what CAD means
| jameshart wrote:
| It wasn't computer-aided. A human didn't use a computer to
| help them make a design. A computer did the _whole design_
| MisterTea wrote:
| This is splitting hairs. I would go further and assume most
| CAD users do not know what CAD stands for. They likely assume
| Inventor or Solidworks.
| narrator wrote:
| I imagine the factories of the future will be 3d printed and look
| like metallic fungus. They will be serviceable only with robots
| that can slide around in narrow gaps to inspect them. They will
| mostly be operated in the dark. Perhaps they will be operated
| deep underground.
| thiudvghjg67644 wrote:
| Quite interesting to contrast with the comments on the HN about
| the Indian startup Agnikul doing the same thing.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40668088
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| They are both about 3d printing rocket engines, but it's a bit
| of comparing apples and oranges.
|
| - The linked article is about improving the speed of
| manufacturing with 3D printing. The linked article claimed that
| there was no need for any post-fabrication qualification and
| there was much skepticism in that claim. But they did perform a
| sub-orbital launch.
|
| - This article is about improving speed in the design cycle.
| The article mentions after printing it was "post-processed at
| the University of Sheffield and prepared for the test". Here
| there is skepticism of the actual performance (namely
| efficiency) of the engine for practical purposes.
|
| 3D printing rocket engines themselves in and of itself is not a
| new thing. Rocket Labs has 3D printed rocket engines and has
| been flying them since 2018
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