Andrews Space, Inc.

Andrews Space, Inc. was founded in 1999 to be a catalyst in the commercialization and development of space. The company is an affordable integrator of aerospace systems and developer of advanced space technologies.

Transcript

00:00:01 one day it will be common for all of us to live and work in space for now though NASA and others around the world are figuring out how to make that happen including a small company in Seattle Washington called Andrew Space Incorporated early on the firm began working with NASA on Space Transportation Technologies through the small business Innovation research or

00:00:25 sbir program we wanted to look at what were those Technologies out there that could really open up space for commercialization that would allow us to get into lower thit and then would take you beyond lower Thor but even beyond the moon and allow people to go routinely and effectively to the planets with an sbir contract from Marshall space flight center one of the

00:00:48 Technologies they developed is an air collection enrichment system or Aces Aces transforms vertical takeoff systems into horizontal takeoff horizontal Landing type system systems under another Marshall sbir award The Firm worked on such a vehicle called mag Orion and its smaller version mini mag Orion the department of energy provided funds for testing the concept at Sandia

00:01:15 National Laboratory a year later with an sbir award from Marshall Andrews developed a propulsion concept called alchemist that uses Aces and relies on air separation with a Vortex tube to reduce takeoff weight the defense Advanced research projects agency or DARPA has an interest in Alchemist and has now funded further development Andrews also worked on the alternate

00:01:40 access to station program with researchers at Marshall our approach was launching a spacecraft on an a traditional Expendable launch vehicle it would go to the International Space Station and then we would actually recover that vehicle to reduce the overall cost of the system and make it affordable to NASA and other commercial users a key technology for the concept

00:01:59 was an inflatable valute Andrews invested their own funds and teamed with Dryden flight Research Center through sbir Awards to overcome the belut challenges associated with re-entry they're also collaborating with researchers at the University of Washington on the belut structure recently Marshall awarded the firm an sbir contract to work on controlling the

00:02:22 ballute during re-entry using a rigidized braking system that generates lift Andrews has been transferring much of their sbir work to other Federal programs as well it's all very synergistic and we continue to work very closely with DARPA and the Air Force on operation sponsor space initiatives and all that was built out of the the foundation of the NASA contracts SBI

00:02:46 contracts have played a significant role in developing and understanding how to approach putting people into space when we first started going into looking at what sbirs were we were doing it primarily for the technology aspects but on the engineering side it's really offered the engineers to really do more than just the technical aspects is also take it on the programmatic side today

00:03:10 Andrews is working with Alliant technology systems thol on refining the designs for NASA's Aries one launch vehicle and their legacy of successful sbir Technologies is playing a role NASA in the past has always had to develop all of its own unique Technologies and capabilities all by itself today we want to go out and leverage all the many things that the commercial sector and

00:03:35 the private sector is doing and use those in our exploration endeavors