Ventions

Ventions, LLC is a launch vehicle company based in San Francisco, California, that develops pump-fed, liquid bipropellant propulsion engines for DARPA and NASA.[1][2] Ventions is a technology provider for DARPA's Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (ALASA) program, and as of 2014 was working on the Small Air Launch Vehicle to Orbit (SALVO) program,[3][4] a pathfinder air-launched vehicle for placement of cubesat sized payloads into low Earth orbit.

History

Ventions was founded in 2005 as a technology development and services company. Initial work focused on a novel fabrication technique to realize fine featured injectors and cooling channels in rocket engines no more than a few centimeters in size. This was followed by use of the same technique to manufacture small impellers having blade heights as small as 0.020 inches (0.51 mm), and demonstration of small-scale turbomachinery-based pumps for on-board pressurization of propellants.[5]

Ventions is currently integrating its propulsion systems, avionics and other pressurization / plumbing components into a full-up launch vehicle under a DARPA funded program.

Locations

Ventions primary office and lab is located in South of Market, San Francisco.

It also has a small presence in Washington DC, and a dedicated test-site for hot-fire testing of rocket engines and launch vehicle stages at Castle Airport in Atwater, California.

References

  1. ↑ "Darpa Revisits Air Launch With Focus On Cost". Aviation Week. 25 June 2012.
  2. ↑ "Contracts awarded by NASA to Ventions, LLC". sbir.gsfc.nasa.gov. NASA (SBIR/STTR). Retrieved 19 June 2014.
  3. ↑ Jeff Foust (2 June 2014). "DARPA Developing Operational Pathfinder for ALASA Air Launch System". Space News. Retrieved 19 June 2014.
  4. ↑ Jeff Foust (30 June 2014), Air launch, big and small, The Space Review
  5. ↑ "Small, Light-Weight Pump Technology for On-Board Pressurization of Propellants in a Mars Ascent Vehicle".


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