(Music)
The J-2X engine is an upper stage
engine that is being developed by NASA
in partnership with Pratt and Whitney
Rocketdyne and this engine is going to
provide the thrust for an upper stage for
a future launch vehicle for NASA. The
J-2X engine will provide nominally
294,000 pounds of thrust at 448 seconds
of ISP. The ISP is the gas mileage of
the engine. It's what gives it the
efficiency to be an upper stage engine.
I like to think of first stage engines
as being what I call big diesel trucks...
power. And upper stage engines as being
more gas mileage, the car that can go
the longest on one fill of gas.
It's designed to get you initially into
orbit with the heavy mass and then it's
also designed to then fire you again
away from earth orbit going either to
Mars, moon or some other near earth
object. Currently there are several
upper stage engines that are being
used but they are all for
much smaller payloads. If you're trying
to take humans into orbit or large
expeditions into orbit you need much
more thrust. You'd have to cluster
dozens of these smaller engines together.
The J2 lets you do the mission in one
or two engines. Additionally it can
now take a lunar mission all the way
to orbit, and a much larger lunar
mission than they have one before.
For instance, under these current
missions you can land anywhere on
the moon, not just the equatorial
regions.It's important to have that
kind of flexibility, to have enough
thrust to be able to do the things
you need to do while still beholden
to earth's gravity, and also to be
able to be flexible enough to do
other jobs as well. It's a nice
sweet spot of thrust and performance
that goes well with several different
launch vehicles. The J-2X is really
building on the heritage of our J2
engine which is the only upper stage
engine that took man to the moon on
the Apollo program back in the sixties.
So we are building on that heritage,
techniques, new design techniques,
new manufacturing techniques...working
with outside vendors on castings and
forgings, to develop the engine to
get a little more thrust and a little
bit more ISP, or gas mileage out of
the engine. The J-2X has a lot of
additional features the original didn't
have. First of all we've upgraded all
the electronics. The prior J2 had
tube generation electronics and we've
gone to all solid state, best there is
out there right now graded for space
flight. Additionally we've eliminated
all the materials that you can't handle
any more, like the berylliums and the
things you don't want to do. And we've
gone to the latest generation of design
practices and bonding processes so
that the workmanship is a much higher
level than was ever obtainable in the
old J2. Well the design phase is
finished so we are now in full scale
manufacturing of all of our development
engines to allow us to finish our
development program. We are currently
in the throes of trying to really get
a lot of hardware through the shop to
meet this early test date. We have
daily telecons in which we discuss
the next operations on the critical
path parts. At Rocketdyne they have
stand up meetings every morning with
the machinists before they start
operations. It's really diligent effort
right now because we have pretty much
every major component of the combustion
devices is in one point of fabrication
at this point.Now is a great time for
the J-2X engine in that its parts are
coming together. Some of the materials
we ordered several years ago...now they
are in here, they are being worked,
they're being machined, joined, and
we're starting to assemble the turbo
pumps.So here in the precision measurement
room we are part of the quality
organization. And we make sure that
quality is inspected into all of the
hardware by insuring that we are
meeting blue print specs and that
everything is up to the standard that
the engineering team has set up for
us to inspect the hardware to.We have
nine engines that we expect to build
and we are very, very near to completion
of engine ten thousand one which is
our first engine.We are seeing a lot
of the hardware come in to our room,
and we are making every effort to get
that hardware in and out as quickly
as possible and our goal is to have
all that hardware assembled, and we're
making good progress here in our room
in helping those efforts.The initial
J-2X engine ten thousand one will be
ready for test in early calendar 2011.
And that testing will really give us
an idea whether we have nailed the
design. The manufacturing processes
are now being developed on this first
engine and we're proofing these things
out...making sure the tapes are correct
in the machining, making sure the weld
parameters are right, making sure the
assembly sequences are perfect for
the upcoming engines. So it's always
hard to get that first engine put
together. But once we have it put
together we'll put in a bunch of
improvements and the following engines
will go together much more easily.