Stefan Powell and Juliet McLachlan tell us how Dawn Aerospace is making the space sector more sustainable. Its products range from satellite thrusters to the Dawn Mk-II Aurora – a spaceplane that operates like an airplane but is capable of launching satellites into orbit.
Questions for discussion:
- How is a spaceplane similar to a rocket? How is it different?
- Why do you think Dawn Aerospace is starting with the Dawn Mk-II Aurora before creating bigger spaceplanes?
Transcript
Stefan Powell
Chief Executive Officer, Chief Technical Officer, Co-founder, Dawn Aerospace
The key research happening at Dawn is all about space transportation – getting up to space – and that’s all about our reusable spaceplane technologies and enabling satellites to move around effectively in space. So that’s our in-space propulsion. Those are thrusters that go on satellites.
Our point of difference on these thrusters is that we use sustainable propellants. The propellant that the space industry has been using for the previous 70 years is hydrazine. It’s incredibly toxic – a teaspoon of it will kill everyone in the room. Lots of companies coming in to space now really don’t want to have to deal with it, and so they need something that’s much greener, much easier to handle, much more cost-effective, and so our propellants replace hydrazine. Right now, Dawn Aerospace has 15 thrusters on five different satellites in space and hardware launching up to space for the foreseeable future.
We’re developing spaceplanes because we think they’re just fundamentally better ways to get to space. A spaceplane is a type of rocket that is reusable like an aircraft. So it flies under aircraft regulations like a plane, it lands like a plane, and when it comes back, you can put more fuel in it and you can fly it again.
Rockets traditionally launch in a vertical manner because that was the easiest, most-efficient way to get things into space if you only want to use them once.
Juliet McLachlan
Software Engineer (Flight Operations), Dawn Aerospace
Rockets have some sort of waste no matter what. A common problem that a lot of companies around the world are still trying to tackle is the first stage – the boosters at the bottom – dropping off into the ocean. With Dawn, the spaceplane is designed to be almost completely reusable.
Stefan Powell
Yeah, why do we need a spaceplane? Why do we need a sustainable version of a rocket? Because right now, we only have 100 or so flights to space in a year. And if you’re only flying that much, it’s kind of OK to have a disposable rocket. But if you can imagine going from dialup internet to fibre internet – we want to go not just 10 times as much, we want to go 10,000 times as much. I couldn’t imagine doing that with a single-use vehicle or a vehicle that you only use 10 times. You know a single-use plastic bag is not a great idea. A single-use rocket is really not a great idea. It would just result in so much trash. The most important thing with making a vehicle sustainable right now is to make it reusable.
Juliet McLachlan
The Dawn Mk-II Aurora – the vehicle that you can hopefully see behind me – is the start of a fleet of spaceplanes. This vehicle is a good testbed, and it’s a good place to start testing our systems before we get onto even bigger planes.
Stefan Powell
What we’re working on now is really about building the fundamental capability in these technologies – you know, learning about what reusable space technology is and how do we actually use it. Sustainability is important to me. That was one of the main reasons I got into engineering is I just cared about the planet. I think most people do intrinsically, you know? I care about what the world’s going to be like for my daughter. In terms of Dawn, in terms of the business, it’s just silly to not take sustainability seriously.
Acknowledgements
Stefan Powell, Dawn Aerospace
Juliet McLachlan, Dawn Aerospace
Aurora space plane diagrams, thruster design, Aurora space plane prototype test flights and Aurora prototype on tarmac, Dawn Aerospace
Technicians suiting up to load hazardous hydrazine propellants for Artemis 1 and Space Shuttle launching from Cape Canaveral, NASA
Rocket launching and then dropping second stage, Source and Creation Network
