YJSP Gantry

As the ground structures team lead at the Yellow Jacket Space Program, I was given the gantry project in December 2020. At the time, I had no idea what the gantry and the launch system configuration would look like. The project had to be finished by the end of the Spring 2021 semester, so the timeline was very tight. Together with my team I was able to design, manufacture, build, and test the structure a month before the end of the semester. This remains one of the fastest turnaround projects that I have completed to the date.

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The purpose of the gantry is to provide pressurant, oxidizer, fuel, power, and data to the Yellow Jacket Space Program's Subscale vehicle prior to launch. Two retracting arms, driven by a lead screw, with pneumatic actuators disconnect fluid lines from the vehicle during terminal count.  The main structure is 18 feet tall and made of 8020 aluminum channel. The gantry also houses and protects pneumatic and high pressure K- bottles, as well as our launch feed system. Due to government requirements, the K-bottles are attached to steel C channel bars. 

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The team wanted to have a platform on the gantry on which humans could climb. However, I had to veto that requirement because of the size and high factors of safety that a structure supporting humans must have. This allowed us to switch most of our structural members into 8020 aluminum channel since the structure did not take large loads.

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Aligning the gantry arms with the quick disconnects on the launch vehicle was a problem since the launch rail and gantry were two separate structures. I came up with a design for the gantry arms where they have three degrees of freedom. The design has a lead screw that moves the arms on linear bearings back and forth. The quick disconnects are pulled by a two pneumatic actuators. The quick disconnects went through a testing campaign where we found out how much force the actuators would need to provide. The gantry will be used in the fall of 2021 for multiple static fires.