Frontier Astronautics LLC

Viper LOX/Kerosene Rocket Engine

Our patented Viper engine is a robust, highly reusable, deep-throttling liquid propellant engine. The baseline model can be easily adapted to a variety of sizes to fit almost any propulsion need.

The Viper rocket engine is designed to be highly throttleable and inexpensive to use. It uses a patented injector head that damps acoustic modes in all axes - radial, longitudinal, traverse and cyclic (think "toilet bowl") - so that combustion instability does not occur. Combustion instability will cause a resonance within the engine and cause it to fail. As an example the Saturn F-1 engine had to go through 13 different injector designs before combustion stability was achieved.

When throttling the combustion modes change in frequency such that an engine that is stable at one throttle setting may not be stable at a different throttle setting. The injector was designed with multiple damping modes over a large throttle range. Throttling is important and highly desirable when passengers are on board as the vehicle will accelerate more and more as propellant is consumed. In order to keep G loads low the engine must throttle or be discarded for a smaller engine by staging.

• JET-A Kerosene Fuel (adaptable to Ethanol or Methanol Fuels)
• Designed for throttling applications (9:1 capability)
• Feed pressures from 150 to 250 psia with 150 psia regulated baseline
• 830 to 7500 lbf thrust
• 100+ second continuous burn time
• Removable and quickly replaceable inexpensive ablative liner
• Combustion stability from proprietary injector and acoustic tuned chamber

Asp Hydrogen Peroxide Rocket Engine

The Asp engine is a robust, low-cost monopropellant engine suitable to a variety of lower-thrust applications requiring guaranteed ignition and/or environmentally sensitive propellants.

• 80 - 90% Hydrogen Peroxide
• Designed for throttling applications (7:1 capability)
• Feed pressures from 150 to 250 psia with 150 psia regulated baseline
• 300 to 2100 lbf thrust
• 200+ second continuous burn time
• Dual Catalyst for increased efficiency
• Low maintenance, does not need to be repacked between flights

Attitude Control Systems (ACS)

"Attitude Control" is engineering parlance for controlling the orientation and direction of flight of a vehicle. Sometimes referred to as a "Reaction Control System" when rocket thrusters are used, attitude control systems can also use momentum wheels, control moment gyros, gravity gradient systems etc.

Finding engineers that have the understanding of the kinematics of how a rocket powered vehicle flies, and the forces that are required to keep it flying in the direction you want, are difficult to come by for free-market space companies. Learning to do this by trial and error can be expensive in time, money and equipment loss. Frontier Astronautics brings specific expertise in this field of engineering to this new space industry. We are able to tell you up front if your system is controllable (many are not) and quickly and reliably model the dynamic forces on your vehicle and develop a control system to make it fly under control.

• Six degree of freedom Attitude Control System design and construction
• State Space Design theory
• Pressurant Tanks
• Propellant Feed Lines
• Component Selection (IMU, DGPS, Avionics, Valves, Regulators, Filters)
• Dynamic Stabilization (Control law derivation and Matlab and Simulink modeling)

Hydrogen Peroxide Propellant

Frontier Astronautics and X-L Space Systems have begun on-site production of hydrogen peroxide. 70 to 99% hydrogen peroxide is available in 500 lbm quantities to other space companies.