Moon home. Torrance Company's Tanks Power first private moonlander
By Garth Meyer
If you want to start a payload in the room, there is a man who calls Torrance.
He has the one from a liner without a tank and drive component that you need in an office/warehouse on the Lomita Boulevard.
Four of these tanks are currently on the moon and are still connected to two landing crafts.
Andy Szilagyi is Vice President for Engineering at Scorpius Space Launch Company, who made power for the first private moonland missions in February 2024 and again in March.
“Our tanks were significantly involved in the fact that this is possible,” said Szilagyi.
Scorpius is a branch of Microcosm, a Torrance company for which he worked for the first time in 2007. Ten years later, Szilagyi was more involved with his subsidiary and discovered software for the analysis of space operating tables or “pressure tales”.
Two Scorpius tanks, one with liquid oxygen, the other methane, were on the youngest Moon -Lander missions, led by intuitive machines from Houston, Texas.
“Two liquids meet together that create a drive. Methane is oxidized by oxygen, which creates an impulse,” said Szilagyi. “It's like a kick. They give the (football) ball an impulse. Hot gas gives the vehicle a kick.”
The patented carbon fiber tanks have a diameter of 50 inches.
“The length is about the same,” said Szilagyi, who lives in Palos Verdes. “You are somehow cut.”
Materials help to withdraw them from the competitors. Carbon fiber without metal means that the tanks are lighter – and the easier their structure, the more payload can be pulled in space.
Other pressure containers, on which Szilagyi emphasized, have a metallic layer that extends with temperature and contracts.
“It was difficult for a while to win customers for our kind of tank,” he said, referring to a long consequence of failures by large aerospace companies to develop this technology with the support of the government.
“Andy had a central role in developing this product,” said Marcus Rufer, CEO of Scorpius. “Inventors rarely become successful people; they are not driven by commercially presented applications. There is an old saying:” The best inventors usually die arm. “But Andy can see the larger picture.
Another Scorpius customer, Vaya Space from Südflorida, refines a carrier vehicle to transport a large number of payloads for a hoped-for first start in 2026.
A carrier vehicle is like a flat bed that takes a spaceship in and/or through space.
“It is a piggybackback type of industry; the piggy packs on the starters,” said Szilagyi.
In the missions for intuitive, the Scorpius tanks were connected to his Lander Nova-C. On both trips, the country fell on the side on the moon and shortened the mission.
“There is a lot to learn that they also have to do with these missions,” said Szilagyi. “You cannot stack our tanks on top of each other for the next start.”
Intuitively now his Nova-D, the next generation Lander, which is much larger.
“You probably have four of our tanks on board,” said Szilagyi.
However, Nova-C has even more missions ahead of them.
Scorpius also built small tanks with a diameter of four to five inches for oxygen in the medical field.
In its 26 years in Torrance, the company was varied of 10 to 30 employees with 12.
They make the tanks on site.
“We don't know who will come before us. I suspect, intuitively (via Vaya) will come out of the goal next,” said Szilagyi about the next customer start.
In the long term, the Scorpius tanks could serve another space industry.
“Asteroid mining; people want to take spaceships like this (to do this). Our tanks could drive them forward,” he said.
Szilagyi came to America from Romania at the age of 19 and then went to Harvard before a doctoral thesis. Am MIT, also in physics.
He left Bucharest in 1972 with his brother, his mother and his grandmother. They spent five months in Italy, where Andy studied at the Oversees School of Rome, an American school mainly for refugees. A consultant led him to apply to Harvard.
“Fortunately, I got on some of these good places,” he said.
He had already learned English.
“If I had been a year older, I wouldn't have had an opportunity,” said Szilagyi.
In his fifth grade in Romania, it was the first time that it was permissible to choose a other foreign language than Russian.
The family was placed in New York.
“The famous melting pot,” said Szilagyi.
For them it was East Flatbush, Brooklyn, then the Borough Park.
Szilagyi's first job was for Honeywell in Lexington, Massachusetts, and worked on the night vision for the strategic defense initiative “Star Wars” in the Reagan era – sensors for rockets to recognize other rockets in darkness and fog.
Then he moved to Santa Barbara to work for Hughes Aircraft and the Cold War ended. He later designed infrared stoves in Fullerton and entered telecommunications in Palo Alto.
Szilagyi came to South Bay with 43 patents.
During the microcosm, something went on the other side of the hall.
“The Scorpius subsidiary had some interesting needs,” he said.
The company was worked out in 1999. Both IT and Microcosmos are still housed in the same building.
“We started the all-composite printing ships,” said Rufer, CEO of Scorpius. “From 2004 to 2005 we did this technology from scratch.”
“Andy has more and more agreed.
“In the technology world, it is rare to have a great CAD designer, a great engineer to have a great scientist. It is very rare to have someone who can combine all of this,” said Rufer. “Andy can look through these adjacent fields. I consider him the local brain.”
Scorpius Tanks went on the market for the first time in 2008. You can withstand minus 300 degrees and up to 170 degrees Fahrenheit.
What can be next in the field of room start vehicles?
“Your tank becomes your load -bearing structure,” said Rufer.
“Like a chassis,” said Szilagyi. “These tanks have strong attachments in the structure. In this way you can save mass.”
The prototypes are also built on site compared to the Torrance Memorial Hospital on the 20,000 square meter Scorpius floor.
“I am glad that my work has a decent success with the moon,” said Szilagyi. IS