Reaching for the Stars

By Edwin T. Dean, PE, SE

Aerospace is one of the most remarkable market segments in which the Nishkian firms have been privileged to contribute their engineering expertise. Nishkian Dean VP and Managing Principal, Edwin T. Dean, designed rocket launch facility infrastructure prior to founding Nishkian Dean in 1999 and, since then, this small firm in Portland, Oregon, has designed or assisted in the construction of some major aerospace projects throughout the United States. During this same time, the aerospace industry has transformed from a large institutionally-focused bureaucratic process to one that has embraced commercial innovation.

In recent years, entrepreneurial disruptors like SpaceX, headed by Elon Musk of Tesla fame, and Blue Origin, headed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have driven the industry to commercialize space forward in ways not imagined only a few years ago. But even prior to their entrepreneurial disruption of the space industry, there had been great movement toward commercialization by the United States Air Force and NASA. With the EELV[i] program, the US Air Force, being the largest single user of launch services, pushed the industry to reduce costs through innovation and commercialization, to which Boeing and Lockheed Martin responded. NASA has promoted commercialization through its support of the ISS[ii] with the end of the Shuttle era. This cultural shift within the industry created the opportunity for firms like ours to bring a fresh way of looking at these infrastructure projects. We relish the opportunities we have had so far to help foster this transformation.

As an engineering consultant, Nishkian Dean’s success working in the recent revolution of the aerospace industry is a direct result of our being able to infuse our commercial design mindset into this transformation. Our focus on responsive functional design and constructability has made us a valuable consultant in this industry. At their core, major launch facilities are driven largely by structural requirements, which aligns with our core discipline of structural design, but they are far more complex than that. This allowed us to create a strong team and collaborate with experienced consultants to help support our efforts. We recognized the opportunity that we had to champion and organize a team of consultants and expand our role beyond our core discipline. We had to accept the expertise of our consultants to handle systems that we had no prior experience with, such as cryogenic fuel systems dealing with super-cold liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen, or, more exotically, hypergolics that fuel spacecraft. We brought in experts in electrical power, communications, including specialized GC3[iii] systems, environmental control, and specialized mechanical systems. With our cadre of consultants, we have taken on many adventurous projects.

The Projects

In 2004, we had the opportunity to propose on a small portion of the structural design on the renovation of the existing SLC-3 launch complex at Vandenberg AFB for a new Atlas V. It was a small, 12-person structural consultant competing against the titans of the engineering industry, such as URS, Jacobs, and others, that won the confidence of the builder, Hensel Phelps, and the owner/operator, Lockheed Martin, to bring us on to eventually be the key design entity. In the end, our design team had committed over 50,000 man-hours in less than 16 months in supporting the incredible success of this project to meet the schedule and budget goals that it demanded. Our team helped the project meet its mission requirements and it helped establish ourselves as the team that can get this done.

We have had many continued successes following this project, both in the Western Range and at facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy Space Center in Florida. When disaster struck on October 24, 2005, with Hurricane Wilma destroying the 280-foot-tall door on Lockheed Martin’s Vertical Integration Facility (VIF), it put NASA’s New Horizons[iv] mission to Pluto in jeopardy. We were there the very next day to assess the damage and to work with the team to design, fabricate, install, and test new doors in 7 weeks’ time, ultimately ensuring the mission’s success. New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006, and flew by Pluto 9 years later, on July 14, 2015.

We have also been called on to assist in erecting the 600-foot-tall lightning towers at Launch Complex 39B at the John F. Kennedy Space Center, and the erection of the nearly 380-foot-tall NASA Mobile Launcher for Constellation[v] and now for use with SLS[vi]. Additionally, we have worked on the complex installation of moveable platforms within the historic NASA Vertical Assembly Building (VAB) in support of NASA’s quest to send astronauts to Mars. In a further testament to commercialization, we are now working with private entrepreneurs’ facilities on their own quests to go to Mars.

Closer to Earth, one of our latest challenges has been to support restoring America’s ability to once again launch astronauts from US soil. Boeing and United Launch Alliance (ULA), as a part of their $4.2 billion CCtCap award, are developing infrastructure to support manned spaceflight launches from Launch Complex 41. And how do you get astronauts from the ground into a capsule 200 feet in the air on a “clean pad”? You build a 250-foot tall access tower less than 60 feet from the launch pad with an articulating arm so that they can safely walk over and climb in, naturally. Now substantially complete, this installation provides astronauts with a state-of-the-art means to reliably and safely begin their journey to the International Space Station. Restoring manned spaceflight to American soil through the design of this complex is something we are proud to have played a part in.

Our work with other rocket launch installations continues at CCAFS, KSC, and VAFB, as the aerospace industry continues its inevitable commercial transformation.

The Systems

Launch systems are complex and often extremely large mechanical structural systems. Buildings weighing more than 8 million pounds that need to move, be jacked up, and driven by hydraulic power systems as fast as a person can walk; an 70,000-lb arm that must be able to swing in seconds while being remotely monitored and controlled; and precision-operable platforms powered by nitrogen motors are just a few examples of the challenges we have faced in our aerospace work. To develop these designs, we bring together a diverse group of engineers with broad technical backgrounds to address the structural-mechanical-electrical challenges.

These challenges make the aerospace market uniquely exciting for us to tackle. The projects involve the integration of a multi-disciplined design team with the suppliers, fabricators, and constructors who put it all together, and the testing engineers who, along with us, validate functionality. This teamwork creates an organization that has a far-reaching expertise beyond what is done in the conventional building market. Moving parts, intricate control systems, and the requirement that these systems function every single time that they are employed is a tall order that punctuates the care and coordination that goes into each design.

Unsurprisingly, the launch environment is very extreme. In conventional design, we may deal with a 100 PSF live load, or perhaps at maximum a 250 PSF live load to accommodate a truck on a sidewalk. In the launch environment, we may see loads as high as 250 PSI – that is pounds per square inch, or 144 times the sidewalk load example, or 36,000 PSF, with a total launch load in the millions of pounds. We also work with extreme temperatures from liquid oxygen or LOX at -350°F or even colder liquid hydrogen at -425°F.

Liquid oxygen, in addition to being extremely cold, is incredibly corrosive and like hydrogen is explosive in the presence of an ignition source. The fuel for solid rocket motors is largely composed of aluminum perchlorate, which when burned leaves a hydrogen chloride residue that combines with water to create a highly-destructive, corrosive byproduct of hydrochloric acid that coats the surfaces of the structures on the launch pad. If not properly cleaned and coated, these chemicals can literally melt steel structures.

Nishkian Dean has developed over many years a unique niche where we are able to provide specialized design services for rocket launch facility infrastructure. Leading a design team of consultants, or supporting the structural design of aerospace launch facilities, has proven to be a market in which we truly enjoy working. Playing a role in helping the US space program excel is an incredible legacy to be able to look back on.

Edwin T. Dean, PE, SE is Vice President and Managing Principal of Nishkian Dean a structural engineering consulting firm in Portland, Oregon.