About Launch-Systems
The purpose of my company is to provide more warfighting capability to our fleet at less cost. I am offering a technology that significantly increases the capability of the current steam catapults at a significant reduction in operating costs.
I have named this technology ICCALS or the Internal Combustion Catpult Aircraft Launch System.
In an earlier incarnation, the C14 Internal Combustion Catapult designed by Reaction Motors, (see C14 below under "additional information") was built, installed at Lakehurst Naval Air Warfare Center and launched planes in 1959. The C14 catapult was not selected for the Enterprise (CVN 65) due to "reliability issues" (see History below). Not knowing about the C14, in the 1990s, I independently invented a bipropellant driven catapult that is the same system with much better technology.
I was employed at the time by Newport News Shipbuilding at the time and I headed a team that went forward to the Navy in 1996 with our proposed catapult. Dick Bushway, the Advanced Technology Catapult Procurement Officer for NAVAIR PMA 251 budgeted $35 million to build and test the ICCALS system as a competitor to the EMALS system.
In 1998, Sherry Buschmann of NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center, approached the Navy with a proposal to co-fund Electromagnetic Launch as they were interested in applying the technology to launch of space vehicles. The Navy, at a fairly high level, found this attractive and decided that this was the way to proceed. Also, Newport News found itself in the position of being a technology proposer and technology integrator at the same time. To avoid this conflict and in agreement with the Navy's decision for EMALS, my program was defunded and was terminated, even though we were building and testing combustor hardware.
The program stayed dormant for 13 Years, first as directed by my management and then as honoring a request by VAdm Mahr to not muddy the water while the kinks were worked out of EMALS. It appears that the EMALS technology is working now, so I feel free to put the ICCALS technology back on the table which I am doing for the reasons outlined in the attached powerpoint presentation (seee Benefits below). Since retiring, I have further improved the technology and have a system that I am extremely confident will provide a greatly increased capability over the existing steam catapults and provide significant reduction in operations and maintenance costs.
In summary. Compared to the C13 steam catapult, ICCALS:
- Is much lighter, approximately 780,000 pounds lighter than the C13 steam catapults 50+ feet above the waterline
- Requires much less volume, as there is no requirement for steam supply piping, valves, crossconnect piping and hangers, structure and foundations, (see Graphics page) freeing up ship space.
- Is much more powerful than the steam cat (steam cat = 75 Megajoules launch energy while ICCALS= 792 Megajoules launch energy).
- Much less expensive. 90+ percent based upon the C13 Mod 0 through Mod 2 existing/installed catapult components with the rest of the components being COTS or easily developed.
- Backfittable to the existing Nimitz Class catapults for a substantial increase in performance while EMALS is not backfittable.
- Can increase the launch energy from start to end of the launch while steam has a fall-off in launch energy and rate of acceleration over the lenth of the launch stroke.
- Allows a constant or increasing acceleration during launch.
- Allows reduction or elimination of the "launch Box" for most launches.
- Allows reduction or elimination of wind over deck requirements for launch.
- Allows reduction or elimination of "island" induced turbulence experienced by recovering aircraft due to reduced ship speed.
- Allows installation aboard other flat-tops to launch fully loaded F18 and F35s.
- ICCALS Is much more efficient than steam as the C13 catapults require nuclear provided thermal energy to generate steam to provide energy for launch while ICCALS is direct chemical to thermal energy and does not need receivers to store energy prior to launch and does not require a change in reactor operating temperature to supply steam to the catapult.
- ICCALS, where the energy state conversion is chemical energy to thermal energy, is more efficient than EMALS which requires nuclear to thermal, thermal to steam, steam to mechanical (turbines) mechanical to electrical (ship's generators), electrical to mechanical inertia (MG sets), mechanical inertia to electrical energy (mg sets)for EMALS and electrical to mechanical thrust at the launch engine for a total of 7 energy state changes. If each EMALS energy state change is 80% efficient, then it takes 581.75 megajoules of energy input from the ship's generating system to deliver 122 megajoules of launch energy.
- Gains the same capability as EMALS at the lower end of of the launch weight range while increasing capability at the upper end of the weight range for launching UCAVs or TLAM/TASM along with fully loaded fighter-bombers.
The ICCALS program was on target to provide working ICCALS catapults, within the budget, for CVN77 prior to being shut down. PCO Captain O'Hare wanted at least Cat #4 to be an ICCALS.
Please read the White Paper and PowerPoint presentation (benefits) linked below (still rough drafts being developed).
We are located 3 miles from Newport News Shipbuilding, 5 miles from Langley Air Force Base / NASA Langley and 15 miles from Norfolk Naval Operating Base.
Additional information
NASA
Location:
2813 Victoria Blvd
Hampton, VA 23661
Hours:
Mon - Fri: 9AM - 5PM
Sat: 10AM - 5PM
Sun: Closed
