Ursa Major aims to improve solid rocket motor production with Additive Manufacturing
Originally published November 24, 2023 online at https://www.metal-am.com
Ursa Major Technologies Inc, located in Berthoud, Colorado, USA, has announced its Lynx process, an approach to the design and manufacture of solid rocket motors (SRM) offering a quicker, more cost-effective process that uses Additive Manufacturing to construct multiple motors.
Traditional SRM providers depend on production lines that can be hard to modify, costly to intensify, and require a large workforce to run. Rather than adhering to platform-specific propellant requirements, Lynx proposes a collaborative solution for energetics.
Ursa Major is using Additive Manufacturing to produce cost-effective solid rocket motors (Courtesy Ursa Major)
At the heart of Ursa Major’s Lynx process are adaptable production units; these use Additive Manufacturing and a system that is not product-specific to quickly produce multiple scalable SRM systems simultaneously. This eliminates the need for costly and time-consuming re-tooling or retraining. This flexibility also applies to propellants, where an agnostic approach to energetic materials allows Ursa Major to directly collaborate with the Department of Defense, established SRM manufacturers, and innovators.
“Ursa Major is offering a new way to scale production of SRMs,” shared Joe Laurienti, Ursa Major founder and CEO. “Lynx meets the defence industry’s need for a faster, cheaper, scalable, and flexible SRM production process that results in better-performing solid rocket motors. We’ve adapted our extensive experience in Additive Manufacturing, materials development, and propulsion production to the most pressing problems facing the SRM industry. The result is an adaptable manufacturing process that is designed to mass produce multiple systems, rapidly switching from one model to another, producing reliable SRMs quickly and at scale, while leaving room to collaborate across the industry on energetics.”
Ursa Major is in the process of developing its core technology, aiming to scale the product to accommodate various motor sizes and applications within the next year. Given the ongoing consolidation in the rocket motor industry, numerous defence contractors are seeking alternatives to buying motor systems from competitors.
