This space company is betting its future on a propellant available everywhere

本文为原文前 6,000 字符的节选翻译，完整内容请查看原文。

Robert, Ryan, and Kirby Carlisle are three engineers who worked at SpaceX during the Falcon 9 era, seeing the revolution in the global launch industry from the inside. The brothers launched rockets, refurbished rockets, and sold rockets. But when it came time for them to leave SpaceX and start their own space company—a lifetime dream for the Carlisle brothers—they chose not to build rockets. Rather, they focused on spacecraft.

罗伯特·卡莱尔（Robert Carlisle）、瑞安·卡莱尔（Ryan Carlisle）和柯比·卡莱尔（Kirby Carlisle）是三位曾在SpaceX猎鹰9号时代工作的工程师，他们从内部见证了全球发射行业的变革。这三兄弟曾参与火箭发射、翻新和销售工作。然而，当他们离开SpaceX并创办自己的航天公司——这一卡莱尔兄弟毕生的梦想——时，他们选择的不是制造火箭，而是专注于航天器。

In late 2022, the three Carlisles founded Argo Space to build infrastructure in space. Their vision was not just in-space transportation but also removing the need to use propellants from Earth to move around the heavens. They chose water, which is potentially harvestable on the Moon and found all over the Solar System, as a means of propulsion. “We based the company on water,” Robert Carlisle said in an interview.

2022年底，卡莱尔三兄弟创立了Argo Space，旨在构建太空基础设施。他们的愿景不仅是太空运输，还包括消除在太空中移动时对地球推进剂的依赖。他们选择了水作为推进手段，因为水不仅可能在月球上开采，而且在整个太阳系中随处可见。“我们以水为基础创立了这家公司，”罗伯特·卡莱尔在接受采访时说道。

The availability of water is key to the company’s vision for building a transportation network between low-Earth orbit, geostationary orbit, and the Moon. This would open up a large number of affordable logistics options, such as satellite resupply, refueling, repair, redeployments, and more. And in the company’s vision, water is not just a propellant; it’s also a coolant and radiation shield.

水的可用性是该公司构建连接近地轨道、地球静止轨道和月球的运输网络愿景的关键。这将开启大量经济实惠的物流选择，例如卫星补给、加油、维修、重新部署等。在公司的愿景中，水不仅是推进剂，还是冷却剂和辐射屏蔽层。

Much of the spacecraft, including its thrusters to the avionics, is cooled by water. This helps increase the propellant mass fraction of the spacecraft, meaning more mass is devoted to propellant, allowing the vehicle to go farther and do more things. “In the long run, this water-based transportation will give us a commercial incentive, a profit motive to go harvest it from the Moon’s shallower gravity well,” Robert Carlisle said.

航天器的大部分组件，从推进器到航空电子设备，都由水进行冷却。这有助于提高航天器的推进剂质量分数，意味着更多的质量被分配给推进剂，从而使飞行器能够走得更远并执行更多任务。“从长远来看，这种以水为基础的运输方式将为我们提供商业激励和利润动机，去从月球较浅的重力井中开采水资源，”罗伯特·卡莱尔表示。

Argo Space flew its first demonstration mission, dubbed Navigator, in July on a Falcon 9 rideshare. The company successfully made contact with the spacecraft, but one of its two rollout solar arrays failed to deploy. Controllers spent about half a day troubleshooting the issue and gathering data on the spacecraft’s health. Unfortunately, however, the spacecraft remained power-negative, draining its battery. There was not enough energy to test the propulsion system.

Argo Space于7月通过猎鹰9号的拼车发射任务进行了首次演示任务，代号为“领航员”（Navigator）。公司成功与航天器建立了联系，但其两个展开式太阳能电池阵列中的一个未能成功部署。控制人员花费了大约半天时间排查故障并收集航天器的健康数据。然而不幸的是，航天器始终处于功率负增长状态，电池电量耗尽，没有足够的能量来测试推进系统。

“We did get to validate the flight software, the ground software, the core avionics, the structures, and everything up to flight qualification, but no propulsion,” Robert Carlisle said. “So, you know, obviously that’s going to be a key goal on these next two missions.”

“我们确实验证了飞行软件、地面软件、核心航空电子设备、结构以及所有达到飞行鉴定标准的组件，但唯独没有验证推进系统，”罗伯特·卡莱尔说，“所以，你知道，这显然将成为接下来两次任务的关键目标。”

The company’s next-generation spacecraft, Chiron, is intended to pack high performance into a small, roughly 200-kg package. The company plans two Chiron missions in 2027, both flying payloads for an undisclosed national security customer. The first mission is bound for low-Earth orbit, and the second to a geostationary transfer orbit. The goal across the two flights is to demonstrate Chiron’s propulsion system, including its ability to maneuver between different orbital environments.

该公司的新一代航天器“喀戎”（Chiron）旨在将高性能集成到一个约200公斤的小型载体中。公司计划在2027年执行两次“喀戎”任务，均为一家未公开的国家安全客户运送载荷。第一次任务目标是近地轨道，第二次是地球静止转移轨道。这两次飞行的目标是演示“喀戎”的推进系统，包括其在不同轨道环境之间机动的能力。

It’s notable that the Carlisles spent much of their working lives at SpaceX to open up access to space with the Falcon 9 rocket, but neither of Argo’s next two missions will fly on a SpaceX vehicle. That’s because the company is pulling back on the commercial availability of the workhorse launch vehicle. So Argo’s first Chiron mission is flying on an undisclosed new commercial rocket, definitely a calculated risk. And the second is going on an unspecified government-furnished launch vehicle.

值得注意的是，卡莱尔兄弟职业生涯的大部分时间都在SpaceX工作，利用猎鹰9号火箭开启了太空通道，但Argo接下来的两次任务都不会使用SpaceX的运载工具。这是因为SpaceX正在缩减该主力运载火箭的商业可用性。因此，Argo的首次“喀戎”任务将搭载一枚未公开的新型商业火箭，这无疑是一次经过计算的风险。第二次任务则将使用未指定的政府提供运载工具。

Argo Space probably would have preferred a rideshare on the Falcon 9 for its first Chiron mission, but one was not available within its schedule. “We don’t want to be waiting around for another year and a half, two years plus to go get that ride,” Robert Carlisle said. “Right now you’ve got to get on a wait list, and it’s far out. There’s not launches available for sale.”

Argo Space原本可能更倾向于为首次“喀戎”任务选择猎鹰9号的拼车发射，但在其时间表内无法获得名额。“我们不想再等一年半甚至两年以上才能获得发射机会，”罗伯特·卡莱尔说，“现在你必须排队，而且排得很远。目前没有可供购买的发射机会。”

Argo says it can achieve more than 2 km/s of delta-v in a roughly 200 kg spacecraft. That’s a lot of capability for a small vehicle, allowing it to do things like raise a circular orbit at about 400 km above the Earth’s surface to more than 5,000 km. It’s also equivalent to several decades of station-keeping in geostationary orbit. The propulsion system is basically a small rocket that uses hydrogen and oxygen as propellants.

Argo表示，其约200公斤的航天器可以实现超过2公里/秒的增量速度（delta-v）。对于小型飞行器来说，这具备强大的能力，使其能够执行诸如将地球表面上方约400公里的圆轨道提升至5000公里以上等任务。这也相当于在地球静止轨道上进行数十年的位置保持。该推进系统本质上是一枚使用氢和氧作为推进剂的小型火箭。

However, instead of launching with separate tanks of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, Chiron starts with liquid water. In space, the vehicle uses solar power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases and burns them to generate thrust. Storing these propellants in their gaseous forms retains them in a less dense form but avoids the complexity of storage at cryogenic temperatures. However, the water itself can be stored as a relatively dense liquid at modest pressures until it is needed.

然而，“喀戎”并非携带独立的液氢和液氧储罐发射，而是携带液态水。在太空中，飞行器利用太阳能将水分解为氢气和氧气，并燃烧它们产生推力。以气态形式储存这些推进剂虽然密度较低，但避免了低温储存的复杂性。同时，水本身可以在适中压力下以相对致密的液体形式储存，直到需要时使用。

Electric-based propulsion is not new, of course. But Chiron takes a different approach, using electricity to split water and then a conventional rocket engine rather than ion thrusters. This provides more thrust than a conventional electric thruster with a similar amount of power.

当然，电力推进技术并不新鲜。但“喀戎”采取了不同的方法，利用电力分解水，然后使用传统的火箭发动机而非离子推进器。在功率相当的情况下，这比传统的电推进器能提供更大的推力。

This isn’t the first time water has been used as a propellant in space. In late 2017, two small satellites developed by NASA demonstrated a compact water-based propulsion system to maneuver in orbit. A commercial space company, Momentus, has used water propellant for in-space maneuvering as well. But Argo is aiming to do this on a larger scale. After Chiron, the company is working on a vehicle called Argonaut, which has a maximum payload capacity of 1,400 kg and a maximum delta-v of 17 km/s per tank.

这并非水首次在太空中被用作推进剂。2017年底，NASA开发的两个小型卫星演示了一种紧凑的水基推进系统，用于轨道机动。商业航天公司Momentus也曾使用水推进剂进行太空机动。但Argo的目标是更大规模地实现这一目标。在“喀戎”之后，该公司正在研发名为“阿尔戈英雄”（Argonaut）的飞行器，其最大有效载荷能力为1400公斤，每个储罐的最大增量速度为17公里/秒。