The staff of A & E Engineering has had considerable experience in designing and building air and space vehicles of varied layout and capabilities. Below are some examples of these designs.
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Staff now in A & E Engineering were employed by Pioneer Rocketplane (early 1996 through May of 1997), during the early design phases of the "Pathfinder" in-flight LOX transfer spaceplane. Work performed for Pioneer Rocketplane included determining trajectories using POST (for satellite launch missions as well as long range hypersonic transport missions), producing 3-D CAD models and renderings for promotional purposes and vehicle conceptual design. Variant concepts were also studied, with fully realized conceptual designs typically produced within one or two days of receiving notification of a concept to be studied. These variants included such designs as the Mini-Pathfinder (a subscale design produced for NASA-JSC as an Assured Crew Return Vehicle) and a concept with the upper stage launched through the nose (not selected for Pioneer, but selected for Kelly and Space Access).
Support was provided by current A & E staff to StarCraft, Inc. for the StarBooster program. Conversion of sketches to CAD drawings, layouts of proposed upper stages, design refinements to proposed future heavy lift variants, large payload detailed layouts and conceptual designs of large core vehicles for SPS and Mars mission architectures were provided.
A "gas hopper" was designed at Pioneer Astronautics (not related to Pioneer Rocketplane). This vehicle was a proposed rover for Mars; it would operate by compressing CO2 out of the Martian atmosphere, pressurizing it, and using it for propulsion much like a toy water rocket.
A sounding rocket was designed for the USAF for the role of launching small target payloads (for interception tests). This vehicle had a LOX/methanol rocket engine with 2500 pounds thrust and a payload of 110 pounds.
A Mars Ascent Vehicle was designed for launching a soil/rock payload from the surface of Mars into Martian orbit, to be recovered and returned to Earth by a later mission. This two stage vehicle was powered by 500-lbf thrust rocket engines burning LOX/methanol produced on the Martian surface. The rocket engines were designed in some detail, and are shown on the liquid fueled rocket page.
The ejector ramjet test vehicle was designed and built under a NASA SBIR Phase II program. This program served as the basis for the bulk of the liquid fueled rocket work done by the current staff of A & E Engineering, and was largely successful, despite some profound management "issues." This vehicle was in essence a small liquid-fueled sounding rocket of our own design mated with a ramjet duct, solid rocket boosters, a data transmission and recording system and a parachute recovery system. A stripped and simplified version of this could easily serve as the basis of a robust and reusable sounding rocket produced by the staff of A & E Engineering.
Flyback Booster, SSTO and Ultra Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle are conceptual designs being worked by A & E Engineering. These are, sadly, somewhat beyond A & E's current financing abilities... but they could be had for a reasonable cost (as costs go in aerospace). All have systems in common to lower development and production costs.
Modular Low-Cost Reusable Launcher: this is a project currently being worked by A & E Engineering to produce a simple, reliable and reusable launch vehicle. Unlike other RLV systems currently under development, this is a multiple stage system... with the first step in the process to design a small, low cost sounding rocket (similar to, but larger than, the core from the ejector ramjet test vehicle) which would not only serve as the second stage of another vehicle, but would be able to generate revenue on it's own. By this way, a launch vehicle could financially bootstrap itself to orbit. Quite low funding, in comparison to other systems currently under development, would allow this program to get underway.
A & E Engineering is capable of designing rocket engines to your specifications, anything from small cold-gas thrusters to large booster engines. The level of detail is up to you; anything from conceptual design on up to drawings ready to take to the machinist. The staff of A & E Engineering would also be happy to build and test your engine for you. Current facilities can handle up to several hundred pounds of thrust; increased thrust levels are possible with an improvement in facilities (this is currently planned).
Contact A & E Engineering to get a quote on the work you need done on your rocket.
