The UCI Rocket Project Liquids team is one of the few undergraduate teams that launched a methalox rocket in 2023. Methalox is the leading-edge fuel companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are using to get to Mars. Join this visit to the rocket lab as they prepare to launch their second-generation methalox rocket.
Transcript:
[male voice: 3 2 1. Ignition. Female voice: Good light, good light.]
[Sound of cold flow]
[sci fi music]
NATALIE TSO, HOST: That's the UCI Rocket Project Liquids Team doing a cold flow on campus. In 2023, the UCI team was one of the few undergraduate teams in America to launch a methalox rocket using the same cutting-edge fuel type the new space industry is using to reach Mars. Propulsion lead Uma Iyer told me why they chose this challenging leading-edge fuel.
UMA IYER: So we chose methalox because as students, it's really important to work our way up to industry. And that's what all these big new space companies use, like SpaceX, Blue Origin, they’re using methalox. So by getting our hands on cryogenics, we're basically adapting ourselves like towards the jobs that we'll be working on in the future.
ERIC TRAN: One of the big reasons we use methalox is to follow in the footsteps of giants like SpaceX and Blue Origin, and they use it because you can actually produce methalox on Mars, and that way you can actually go home from Mars.
TSO: That's operations lead Eric Tran who tells us about the fuel’s challenges.
TRAN: One of the big ones is the fact that methalox unlike other more traditional fuels is a cryogen so it has to be super cold in order to stay a liquid and that introduces a lot of issues of stuff freezing over when you don't want IT to freeze over, stuff leaking due to the fact that it needs to stay at a certain pressure to be able to continue staying in a liquid form and stuff like that are like some of the main issues compared to more traditional fields like kerosene, hydrolox, ethanol.
TSO: Methalox is made from liquid oxygen and methane, which is a hydrocarbon that can be made on Mars. But methalox needs to be stored between -160 and -180 degrees Celsius or it starts to vaporize. Iyer explains how they deal with this challenge.
IYER: You never know exactly how much propellant you have inside your tanks because it's going to keep vaporizing. So we chill our tanks to get it at a proper temperature and also to not induce like thermal shock to our system like we want our hardware to still be okay so we chill our tanks and then we fill them and try to get them as full as possible.
And that’s why like time is of the essence and making sure that we're moving quickly at the Mojave Desert, like when we do our test fires so we chill, fill, pressurize our system and then immediately hot fire.
[MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE: 350 Closing….]
TSO: I visited their lab on campus as they were getting ready for a test called a cold flow.
TRAN: Out there they're working on the hardware. They’re I think right now doing instrumentation checks of just double checking if like all the valves and sensors are working properly and they're trying to communicate what they see out there to inside.
[MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE: Can you close vent?]
[MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE: Closing vent]
TRAN: Yeah. So like, they're opening and closing vents and just checking before we get the ball rolling.
TSO: Avionics engineer Alex Amaro told me how he coordinates with the engineers near the rocket.
ALEX AMARO: I just relay whatever information they need. So we have pressure readings all across here and all these dials, temperature readings.
[MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE asking for reading]
[AMARO: PT is reading 270 psi]
[MALE VOICE ON WALKIE TALKIE more dialogue on psi]
[AMARO: Copy opening…]
TSO: So what exactly is a cold flow? Tran explains.
TRAN: To get up to launch, we need to test our engine, which is when we go out to the desert and hotfire the engine. So we light it with actual propellant in the system. But leading up into a hotfire, we validate the system even before then. What we do is we roll out our test stand and rocket here on campus where we conduct a cold flow, which is where instead of running actual liquid oxygen and liquid natural gas, which is methane through the system in actual fuel and lighting it, we run liquid nitrogen through the system.
That way we can simulate those cryogenic conditions for the rocket and also the pressures needed for a hot fire. That way we can validate the system like check for leaks to see if it holds up under really cold temperatures and also if we get the flow that we want and the pressure data that we want. And with that cold flow is what gives us the confidence to go out to do a hot fire.
TSO: The team's first methalox rocket Peter reached 9,300 feet in 2023. Now they aim to go higher with a second generation rocket Moch4. Iyer tells me what's new about this rocket.
IYER: It's much slimmer in diameter and also conserving a lot of mass because obviously you don't want your rocket to be too heavy. So that's the huge change that we've made to our system. So Peter wasn't able to be recovered successfully, but our launch vehicle team is working really, really hard to improve our recovery system so we can hopefully get the rocket and have it be reusable.
TSO: Iyer interned at Blue Origin last summer and shares why she wants to pursue a career in aerospace.
IYER: I like the fact that space has so many opportunities. Okay when it comes to like astronomy and astrophysics, you're going on rabbit holes and rabbit holes of research. It's hard to come to a stopping point or conclusion like there's always something to learn. I think that in itself is like really liberating. Like you feel like when you're learning, you're never going to reach a stopping point. You're never gonna be stumped by Oh what's next because there's just an infinite amount of things to learn.
TSO: Tran shares why he's loved space ever since he was a boy.
TRAN: It's just something about it has....when I first looked at it for the first time when I was younger, just captured my curiosity and imagination. It's one of the few places with so many unknowns. It's one of the few places where you can still imagine, like, what's possible. And that's what keeps me going because like as you get older, the more you know, it's a lot harder to believe.
And with that, space is still one of the few places where there's a bunch of unknowns that we can still dream about.
[MALE VOICE: Ok, we are checking skies. Sky is clear. Okay, we are good to launch. We’re going at (buzzing sound)- and male voice: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Iginition]
TSO: Last December, the U.S. Rocket Project liquids team went to the Mojave Desert to do a vertical test fire and this recovery testing you hear.
[sound of rocket launch and cheers from team]
[sci fi music]
TSO: The test validated their recovery harness. They want to go higher and recover the whole rocket when they launch Moch4 this spring. I'm Natalie Tso for The Lab Beat, which is brought to you by the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering. If you like our podcast, share it with your friends and we'll see you at the next lab.
(Season 1, Episode 10)
