In 2015, SpaceX became the first aerospace organization to partially recover an orbital launch vehicle when the first stage of a Falcon 9 landed in Cape Canaveral after putting a satellite into low earth orbit. SpaceX now regularly recovers Falcon 9 boosters and has used some for as many as 5 successful launches. This has enabled significant and continually increasing cost-savings for both the company and its customers.
I worked on the Falcon Reusability Engineering team at SpaceX, where my job was to reduce the cost and labor hours necessary to prepare a recovered booster for its next launch. Projects to this end included
- organizing internal hardware tracking processes
- working with technicians to write hardware inspection and installation work instructions
- designing heat shield armor to mitigate in-flight damage to Falcon vehicles
Falcon Heat Shield Armor
Skills:
- Siemens NX
- Sheet metal design and manufacturing
- Carbon composite structural analysis
- Thermal and structural analysis
- Design for extreme temperature swings
- Design for NASA manned flight safety requirements
- By the time I started at SpaceX, most individual parts on Falcon had already been flown multiple times, and many had passed their post-flight inspections showing that they were safe to fly multiple times. A few external components which experience extreme aerodynamic heating and buffeting during atmospheric re-entry, however, showed signs of wear after and needed to be replaced after nearly every flight.
Because of the significant parts cost and technician hours required to replace these components, I designed several pieces of armor to increase their lifespan. I brought the armor through the Critical Design Review phase, indicating completion of all the design, analysis, and manufacturing plans needed for flight readiness.
At the time my internship ended, several units were in production and installations were scheduled for later in the year. This armor will save SpaceX significant costs necessary to replace hardware, and more importantly, decrease the turnaround time for reflying Falcon vehicles.
Hardware Lifespan Tracking
Skills:
- SQL
- Internal Wiki/Confluence documentation
- Identifying core design requirements
- Writing detailed technician work instructions
I streamlined SpaceX process for keeping track of Falcon parts which have flown multiple times and inspecting those parts to learn more about their durability.
- Wrote SQL queries which allowed employees to quickly find flight history information from multiple internal databases
- Collaborated with design engineers to establish requirements for re-use of flown hardware units
- Coordinated with manufacturing, launch, and test teams to plan flown hardware inspections and installations
