Ever wonder why Schuyler McElrath is able to speak before user-group meetings about the high reliability of JASC (Jansen’s Aircraft Systems Controls Inc, Tempe, Ariz) liquid-fuel check, three-way purge, proportioning, and other fuel-system valves for frame engines without contradiction? The short answer: JASC’s powerplant components are inherently reliable because of the company’s culture of perfection that underpins its aerospace successes.
Perhaps you read the Page One article in the Memorial Day Weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, “Private Space Run Makes History.” It began as follows:
“The aerospace industry reached a milestone Friday [May 25], when Space Exploration Technologies Corp became the first private company to dock a spacecraft with the International Space Station, some 240 miles above Earth.
The test flight culminates years of planning to demonstrate Space Exploration’s ability to reliably launch cargo missions to supply the orbiting laboratory, a venture supported by a group of 16 nations.”
Jansen in the JASC "lab"
What does this have to do with valves for gas turbine fuel systems? JASC’s Thrust Vector Control Actuators were used on the nine first-stage Merlin engines and single second-stage Merlin engine; plus, the second-stage engine also was equipped with the company’s Bi-Propellant Valve for turbopump fuel control.
JASC President Harvey Jansen was ecstatic as he viewed the successful launch of Falcon 9 and its Dragon Capsule that rendezvoused with the ISS. “The countdown, preflight checkout, launch, separation, second-stage firing, and deployment of the solar array on the Dragon Capsule were flawlessly executed,” he said, adding that “the camera work that beamed this activity back to Earth in real time was phenomenal.”
Jansen told the editors that his engineering career began in 1961 on the RL-10 rocket project and 51 years later his was privileged to witness “something that only a few of us thought possible.” He continued, “I feel very good about sticking with the course that became my professional career in a field that got its roots on the projects that I worked early on. . . .To see it start so many years ago and to witness and become an integral part of it for this launch, stirs up emotions beyond description.”
