Post : NASA is 3D printing rocket engine parts
URL : http://hackaday.com/2012/11/11/nasa-is-3d-printing-rocket-engine-parts/
Posted : November 11, 2012 at 6:00 am
Author : Brian Benchoff
Tags : 3d prining, nasa, selective laser melting, selective laser sintering
Categories : 3d Printer hacks

http://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/nasa.jpeg

In case you haven't heard, NASA is building a new rocket - a replacement for the shuttle - that will eventually take crews again outside low Earth orbit. It's called the Space Launch System and looks surprisingly similar to the Saturn V that took men to the moon. Manufacturing technology is light years ahead of what it was in the mid-60s, and this time around NASA is printing some rocket parts with selective laser melting (http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/selective_melting.html) .

Teams at the Marshall Space Flight center are melting metal powder together with lasers to produce parts for the new J-2X engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-2X) intended for use in the earth departure stage of the Space Launch System. While the 3d-printed parts haven't seen a use in any live fire tests of the J-2X, the goal is to test these parts out later in the year and eventually have them man-rated, to carry astronauts to the moon, asteroids, or even Mars.

This isn't the first time 3d printing has been used to make rocket engines. Earlier this year we saw [Rocket Moonlighting] build an entire rocket engine, powered by propane and NO2, using the same technology that NASA is using. [Moonlighting]'s engine is quite small, too small to lift itself off the ground, even. Still, it's awesome to see 3D printing that will eventually take people into solar orbit.

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