A delivery from California to Florida on Monday marked a new milestone for aerospace company, Vaya Space. It received its first, full-sized liquid oxygen tank shell for its two-stage Dauntless rocket.
The company, based in Cocoa, Florida, about 13 miles from the gates of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, is working towards its first orbital launch in 2026.
“We’ve been working on the design of the Dauntless vehicle for almost two years now, ever since we did our flight tests out in Mohave to prove out the last questions we had on the basic engine technology,” said Robert Fabian, Vaya Space’s Chief Operating Officer. “And so, what we’re seeing now is our dream, this, come to life. It’s an amazing moment for the company.”
The company was founded in 2017 by Sid Gutierrez, a former NASA astronaut and Space Shuttle commander. He was the first U.S.-born, Hispanic astronaut.
The name “Vaya Space” stems from the final call to the crew of STS-59 about two minutes before liftoff when the Orbiter Test Conductor in launch control said, “Endeavour, close and lock your visors, initiate O2 flow, and ‘Vaya con Dios!” which translates to “God be with you as you go.”
Monday’s LOX tank delivery came courtesy of a business partner of Vaya Space: Scorpius Space Launch Company, headquartered in Torrance, California. The company was also responsible for manufacturing the LOX tank used on Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, named Odysseus.
“Originally, we were plan B. They had built their own original tanks ahead of time. They weren’t working out quite as well as they’d wanted, but they had us as a plan B,” said Michael Morey, the senior structural engineer at Scorpius Space. “Once our tanks were built and were being manufactured and passed most of their tests, they found out, let’s make it plan A. So, our tanks became installed into the Nova-C lander.”
The tank shell sent to Vaya Space is the largest they’ve manufactured to date, measuring 22.6 feet in length (6.9 meters) and 6 feet (1.8 meters) in diameter. Before moving to this stage, the two companies worked together for about a year on the design and used a smaller mockup in the early days of understanding the production.
“We learned a ton in actually manufacturing this one in terms of basically the stiffness of that one, since it’s such a small thing, it’s very easy to handle,” said Christopher Hayes, the structures lead at Vaya Space. “With this one, we had to figure out how to tie all the pieces that are going together, together as well as centering it.
“There’s also the fact that it’s really big. You actually need to build a bunch of tooling and scaffolding to get up there. And so, that was definitely a big challenge.”
At one point, Vaya Space was aiming to launch its Dauntless rocket in 2025, but Fabian said currently their plans are for sometime in 2026.
“We have an incredibly complicated Gantt chart of tasks that have to be done between now and then,” Fabian said. “And like everybody else in this industry, we operate at the speed of money and the speed of regulations. So, we can have the best technology in the world. We’ve got to make sure we’re operating it safely and affordably while we do it.”
He said much of the remainder of 2024 will focus on testing their so-called hybrid vortex engines. They are made using 99 percent recycled plastics and are powered by a combination of solid thermoplastic material combined with liquid oxidizer.
That technology is not only the heart of their forthcoming Dauntless rocket, but it has also caught the eye of the U.S. Department of Defense.
“Because our engine is as versatile as it is, there’s ways to adapt it to other uses other than spaceflight,” Fabian said. “We currently have a cooperative research development agreement in place with the Army DEVCOM Aviation and Missile Center, exploring the use of our engines not with cryogenic oxidizer, but with a different oxidizer in tactical field uses.
“And we have a SBIR, a small business independent research, contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory on hypersonic applications for our engines. So, while we’re going full steam ahead on Dauntless, our launch vehicle, the defense side is also starting to gain ground as well as some conceptual work we’ve been doing on in-space propulsion and the ability to use our engines for a high-thrust, high-delta v reaction motors that can move a satellite out of the way of incoming debris or other threats.”
As they continue work on the rocket itself, Fabian said they are also preparing to move into Space Launch Complex 13 (SLC-13) for launch activities. Vaya Space will share that pad with Arizona-based Phantom Space and its Daytona 1 rocket.
Currently, SLC-13 operates as Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters.
“Mark Lester, [Phantom Space’s] COO who’s in charge of launch pads on their end, and I actually knew each other before, from when he was up running Kodiak Spaceport,” Fabian said. “And so, we’ve had a great working relationship between the two companies. So, the first thing we did was set up the business relationship. Nothing’s real until the paperwork’s in place. That’s in place now.
“And then immediately, we started talking with SpaceX and the local SpaceX team has been very cooperative in helping us get the information that we need and working through them on how we do the transition, so that they get their needs met as they build out the new landing pads for the Falcon 9 booster without giving up access to the current ones in the process.”
Fabian said the Space Force would have allowed them to start working on the pad around late January 2025, but he said they won’t need it until around mid-summer of that year. He said for now, they will work on testing multiple components of the rocket, like the newly delivered tank, as well as their engines.
“That’s our unique technology. That’s the stuff that’s not from somewhere else or done somewhere else. The guidance, navigation, control is proven, we’re using commercial off-the-shelf avionics, stage sep systems, fairings,” Fabian said. “We’re working with Scorpius on the tanks. These engines are ours.
“That said, we’ve spent the last seven years refining a physics-based model of how these engines work at any scale and we’ve done 120 plus tests of it, from 150 pounds of thrust, 5,000, soon to be 22,000. And so, we have a really solid understanding of how that engine works, but seeing it at that 22,000 pound thrust test level and characterizing its actual, real world performance, that’s the heart of what we’re doing.”
