Today we’d like to introduce you to Wes Kelly.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Wes. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Triton Systems is a small aerospace company, founded during the days of the X-Prize contest to improve America’s access to space… We incorporated as an LLC back in 2004, but there were roots going back a few years before, transitioning from working with the Johnson Space Center’s engineering and science directorates with their engineering and science teams…
My colleagues and I had been working for a number of years in spaceflight programs here or elsewhere across the country. Some of the work included the initial designs for new spacecraft in response to NASA initiatives. But many of us could see that the future of space would rely on its viability as a commercial enterprise and if there is going to be something beyond big government programs and vague promises about a gee-whiz future up there, people not programs will have to build it.
Given that, the road has not been easy. We pick up some consulting work on existing NASA programs, adjunct college teaching work from time to time and slowly move forward on our vehicle designs. This includes negotiating with team partners across the country for the components and facilities we will need for the coming development phases.
Triton Systems is working on a partially reusable launch system, the Stellar-J. The initial version is designed to launch small satellites, of which when you consider the terms “cube=sat” or “microsat”, they are multiplying like rabbits – on the ground. The dilemma is how to deliver them frequently and economically to their individual orbits in space. Our Stellar-J vehicle attacks that problem with the design of a reusable first stage: powered with reusable rocket engines, jet engines and wings. It will take off and land like a conventional aircraft, but not under rocket power. The rocket ignition comes after achieving airliner cruise conditions (or as we like to say, “in the stratosphere at subsonic speed”). It provides an ascent similar to what the X-15 once performed when released from its carrier craft. And then the when our winged rocket plane ends its rocket burn phase; it releases another “expendable” rocket with a satellite payload. This continues on to orbit while the Stellar J climbs to a peak (apogee) and then descends back to the ground transitioning from high angle of attack glide and then back to a cruise similar to before it ignited its rocket engine(s).
Now earlier, when NASA sought proposals from industry on how to resupply the International Space Station in 2006, Triton Systems with its team was among the dozen and a half organizations that submitted concepts for doing the job. Elon Musk’s company SpaceX and later Orbital Sciences were selected to do the job. Nonetheless, our proposal involved a large scale version of the Stellar-J and our plan was based on building the vehicle here in Houston, using facilities at Ellington Field to house engineers for design, development, test and assembly – and fly away from the field. Does something of this sound familiar? It should. Since then the Houston Airport System has invested considerable resources to attract businesses with such objectives to Ellington Field – and a couple of years ago it completed certification as one of America’s ten commercial spaceports.
Since the space station re-supply competition, our goals with respect to Houston have not changed. We still want to design, build and test the Stellar J in Houston, but we also want to exploit the vehicle’s flexibility. It is not necessary for the Stellar-J to launch satellites over our heads and into the Gulf of Mexico. It can just as well ferry its empty upper stages and satellite payload to the Kennedy Space Center, a west coast facility such as Vandenberg or anywhere a small satellite customer might need. Because having jet engines on the first stage allows the vehicle to ferry itself to the desired launch site, veer its ascent course to a desired great circle route matching the orbit inclination. It can land down range on a launch mission or it can turn around and head back to where it took off. All this should expedite turning the vehicle around for the next flight or getting the satellite mission down quickly in the first place.
Since 2013 when the Ellington Spaceport project was publicly announced at the Houston Space Center, we have maintained continued cordial discussions with the principal leaders of this city Spaceport project, Arturo Machuca at Ellington and Mario Diaz of the Houston Airport System. We have been looking at potential facilities for building the vehicle. And, of course, we have pointed out that our vehicle has greater potential for the spaceport than would some of the other concepts presented at that opening night, vehicles which would launch their payloads or astronauts on expendable vehicles which launch vertically and drop their stages in the sea.
From another standpoint, we are also about to embark on an intern program with engineering and science students attending both Rice University and the University of Houston at Clear Lake. Granted, it is very difficult to deliver a fully designed aircraft or spacecraft to the commercial market, and they are difficult to design…. But the process of designing them has also become very centralized or exclusive as well. A Houston student who wants to do a design internship could apply with students nationwide to some Dow Jones Industrial firm with small possibility of working on a new launch system in Denver, Los Angeles or Seattle… or they can go down the street and work with us on clearly identified problems related to this revolutionary concept with wings. When we get underway with this in a few weeks, I will be excited about this as much as anything else related to our work.
Has it been a smooth road?
It should be no surprise that setting up a small aerospace company can be difficult. Especially since the terrain of aerospace has changed so much since the time when I grew up and the number of companies building jet planes abounded. The industry has consolidated, especially since the 1990s, and as a result, there is a tendency in both the public and private sector to look at the remaining companies like national institutions.
Plus that, futuristic forecasts for space were based on trends of increasing expenditures already huge that would tend to discourage investors or project managers to get involved with design efforts in small organizations.
In obtaining a foothold in the industry, it was often necessary to sign on as a sub-contractor to projects or engineering support contracts based on the government’s stipulation to large companies to stimulate small businesses. But often these activities were curtailed during the recession (2008), especially if the primary contractors were experiencing layoffs or cutbacks.
Additionally, in Houston, as opposed to other areas where there is space activity, there has been a long time assumption that space business in the area was taken care of by the Johnson Space Center. “Well, yes and no…” I would say. The Johnson Space Center has very specific NASA aims and its commercial contractors have very strictly defined contracts to support it. This is different from creating new, commercial spin-0ffs. Despite much education and valuable technical experience from the NASA work, people who want to penetrate the new commercial space markets or design systems for it have to change their perspective on what gives their work value or what constitutes a productive day. In effect, here in Houston, we have a fine equivalent to a merchant marine (space) academy, but at some point, there is a need to transition after graduation.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Triton Systems story. Tell us more about the business.
The roots of Triton Systems began in the 1990s when many of the NASA contractors during a period of austerity experimented with re-hiring many of their engineers and scientists as consultants or “temporary professional”.
This happened to coincide the early stages of space commercialization, encouraged by the X-Prize. During that period Triton Systems (DBA) did work on Space Shuttle avionics, trajectory tools for spacecraft, the assembly of the International Space Station and Russian technical translation related to joint American and Russian missions.
For several years Triton Systems also provided engineering support to the Space Shuttle program looking at problems and new systems for the Shuttle’s main engines. Much of this was an exhaustive look at pressurization systems for the External Tank that supplied liquid hydrogen and oxygen propellants to the Shuttle in a complex plumbing system in which heated hydrogen and oxygen was supplied to the appropriate propellant tank and maintained at appropriate pressures through the flight.
When we placed a bid to re-supply the International Space Station with the Stellar-J, submitted in 2006, we did so in collaboration with other aerospace companies across the country that built rocket engines and rocket stage components. We established many of these relations from previous work. But more than that, we still maintain them, working for example, with Orbital Technologies of Madison, Wisconsin for the Glenn Research Center outside Cleveland on the RTAPS (I & II) research technologies for aerospace propulsion contract since 2010.
Like much proposal work, many of the contributions to Stellar-J was done by colleagues, friends and neighbors in the Clear Lake Area, each with their technical, management and business experience. Frank Perez, for example, a distinguished alumnus of U of Houston, Clear Lake pointed us to the MIT Enterprise Forum back in 2000, Frank provided his management experience and liaison with BAHEP and other Houston business organizations.
The late Dr. Maurice (“Moe”) Miller, the former director of Lockheed’s Engineering Support to the Johnson Space Center for about a decade, looking forward to the day when we would break ground for our assembly facility and then start launches.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Since the Stellar-J had a “scalability” based on its component engines, from the start we strove to identify markets or missions for the Stellar-J vehicles of various take off-weights and capabilities. To be brief, without enumerating the many possible applications of the vehicle, we focused on small satellite launch, starting in 2007.
By now it is a common-place to speak of “cube-sats” or else constellations of small satellites somewhat larger, a decade ago it was very difficult to relay to non-specialists just how many small satellites were under development and what the market forces were that set the prices for their delivery.
Based on another small (but not reusable) satellite launcher released from an aircraft and employing wings (the Pegasus) a figure of $28,000 per pound of satellite payload can be used as a figure of merit. This was actually a higher number than for many larger satellite payloads and the numbers of small satellite projects were increasing every year.
As a source for information about small satellites, we discovered the annual Small Satellite Conference held each August at the Logan, Utah campus of Utah State University, attended with as much international fervor as the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hosted by the Lunar and Planetary Science institute outside of Houston.
We presented papers in 2008 and 2009 at the satellite conference describing the Stellar-J. And since the delivery issue of small satellites is the most pressing issue at these conferences, we were happy to say that we had a podium at their best-attended sessions. Working with the Small Satellite Conference resulted in our earliest small satellite letters of intent, which is an indication to investors that there is a definite market for our product.
Of course, since we are speaking of outlook, a small satellite (up to ~500 lbs.) into low earth orbit (less than 500 kilometers altitude) is our immediate objective. But there are other types of missions to which we also wish to attend. The most effective way to carry human passengers on Stellar-J would be with a vehicle scaled to ten times the takeoff weight of our current vehicle. This could transport crews, passengers and cargo to orbit much like Progress, Soyuz, or the commercial vehicles under development in this country now, but with more flexibility and lower cost based on the method of recovery of the first stage: landing it like a conventional aircraft.
But additionally, besides simply deploying a satellite into space, there are missions that involve delivery to existing stations and platforms, either as pressurized or unpressurized packages. There is also retrieval of satellites or else sending payloads into “sortie” missions. Some of these features can be taken on by the satellite builder, but we are keeping our eyes open on how we can integrate such services into the Stellar-J system with upper stages and payload connections.
Contact Info:
- Address: 17000 El Camino Real – Suite 210A Houston, TX 77058-2633
- Phone: (281) 286-3680
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