Location, location, location—it’s the key to home sales, but location matters to national security experts, too.
Los Alamos National Laboratory’s New Mexico location has led to numerous advantages and collaborations. These benefits are particularly evident when it comes to finding faster, more affordable ways to test new weapons technology and components. “We’re doing some things that can only be done in New Mexico,” says Stephen Judd, manager of the Lab’s Stockpile Responsiveness program (SRP).
Judd explains that the SRP began in 2018 with a Congressional mandate to the U.S. Department of Energy (of which Los Alamos is a part) to “exercise all aspects of the nuclear weapons life cycle” while speeding up the pace of accomplishments and lowering costs. The program’s ambitious goals include rapidly prototyping, producing, and testing technology and systems; shortening the design, certification, and manufacturing process; minimizing both time and cost involved; and transferring knowledge from one generation to the next.
Thanks to an ideal location in the Land of Enchantment, the Lab is meeting those lofty goals in record time. “We’re proving we can do this,” Judd says. “Building new technologies, launching systems out of the atmosphere to test them, and moving at speeds we haven’t achieved in years. The world is changing rapidly, and keeping up with our adversaries requires responsiveness.”
Sending science soaring
For Los Alamos scientists, a key aspect of stockpile responsiveness involves flight testing: launching payloads—a combination of newly developed weapons systems, components, and technology—on rockets. Flight testing provides information on how systems behave in real environments, such as the vacuum of space or extremely high or low temperatures, and at varying accelerations, velocities, and pressures. Compared to computer simulations or ground testing, flight tests determine how things work (or not) out in nature, in environments similar to those experienced in an intercontinental ballistic missile launch.
During these flight tests, the rocket enters space but does not complete an orbit of Earth. Instead, the rockets take a suborbital flight: a brief jaunt above New Mexico.
Throughout the flight, the onboard telemetry system transmits data from the rocket to a nearby satellite. This data provides scientists with real-time information about the performance of the payload, revealing how their experiments and technology function during flight. As the rocket reaches the apogee of its flight (the farthest point in its orbit from Earth), it releases the research payload, which is monitored by scientists during its return fall.
Descending at supersonic speeds, the payload hits the ground in White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), where it is retrieved by scientists. Then it’s back to the lab to analyze data and the post-flight status of the payload.
Since 2021, the SRP team has conducted three test flights and is preparing for five more launches in late 2024 through fall 2025. Along the way, Judd and his colleagues have learned to make the most of their resources, many of which are tied to location.
The land of advantages
Judd points out that New Mexico has a lot to offer, including a commercial space launch provider, an Army missile range, and vast, largely unoccupied stretches of desert.
“New Mexico is an ideal place for flight testing—it’s very controlled,” he says. “Flying over an ocean involves a lot of logistics and can be very expensive and time consuming, and limits what we can test.” The New Mexico desert provides a complementary capability that simplifies many aspects of flight testing and dramatically lowers the cost. During the Cold War years, the United States often conducted flight testing in New Mexico. “The SRP is reestablishing that capability,” Judd says. “We’re getting the band back together, so to speak.”
Flying over that desert wouldn’t be possible without the U.S. Army-operated WSMR, the largest (3,200 square miles) fully instrumented open-air test range in the Department of Defense. Markus Hehlen, the Lab’s senior project leader for agile space, says White Sands sometimes serves as a launch site and always provides expertise in tracking payloads, collecting data, and other important monitoring and measurement tasks. “White Sands adds technical capabilities that allow our team to make measurements that you can’t make anywhere else in the world,” he says.
The third crucial New Mexico advantage became clear when commercial space flight came to the state. Several companies began holding launches in New Mexico using Spaceport America, a Federal Aviation Association (FAA)-licensed launch complex built and owned by the State of New Mexico. Spaceport America provides launch space and services to companies in the commercial aerospace industry, including Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. “We thought, if commercial companies like SpaceX and RocketLab can do orbital launches at low cost and high cadence, why can’t we partner with industry and use Spaceport America or White Sands to do something similar for suborbital launch?” Judd says.
The SRP currently works with two private companies, Up Aerospace and X-Bow (pronounced “crossbow”) Systems. Other flight companies have expressed interest in partnering with the Lab. “The more tools in our toolbox, the better” is Judd’s response, though he won’t say if more partnerships are in the works.
Judd says that partnering with commercial flight companies allows the Lab to conduct tests at a much lower cost than typical tests over the Pacific Ocean. Those flights can run $50–100 million each, whereas current tests can be conducted at $5–10 million, a full order of magnitude cheaper (and faster). “The nuclear enterprise is wrestling with the need to become competitive with our adversaries,” Judd says. That’s where the revolution in commercial space flight and the number of companies competing to serve new aerospace customers has been a boon for the United States, according to Judd. “Our advantage is that we have a huge, distributed industrial base.”
A match made in New Mexico
New Mexico–based X-Bow Systems is one of the private aerospace companies Los Alamos uses to leverage the advantages of commercial space flight. Jason Hundley, X-Bow CEO, describes his company’s collaboration with Los Alamos as “the perfect private-public partnership.” Hundley says X-Bow and the Lab have worked together on two flights so far. “At each launch, their guys are working with our guys, and it has created a really good learning system. It allows us to bring a very evolvable approach to the flight-testing needs.”
Hundley notes that one of the key factors behind the successful partnership is his company’s New Mexico location—X-Bow’s headquarters are in Albuquerque, and it has the ability to launch rockets from Spaceport America or White Sands. “It’s a unique place. We do the launch vehicle design; Los Alamos brings the payload; we drive four hours to White Sands to conduct the physical launch; and we can be home for dinner. New Mexico has the infrastructure and capabilities both X-Bow and the Lab need.”
Despite the many advantages, partnering with private industry has also created new challenges. “For instance, how do you put a classified part on a private rocket?” Judd says. But the SRP team is accustomed to solving problems. “There are a lot of things to think through and many groups that have to be involved—security, classification, even the FAA. How do you ship and store a classified part? How do you recover it? There are zillions of details that have to be worked out.”
One thing that has helped the SRP team tackle those details is the Laboratory’s proximity to the flight locations. “The fact that we can hop in the car and drive to White Sands is incredibly helpful,” Hehlen says.
Judd says when SRP began, the relatively close location of Spaceport America made it possible for the Lab’s security officers to visit the launch site and get an in-person look at how security issues would be handled. “That made a huge difference in our ability to address security concerns.” As it turns out, launching classified experiments on commercial rockets is possible with considerable help from the Lab’s security groups, and without having to get security clearances for everyone involved. “To us, it’s just a payload,” Hundley says.
Putting the ‘new’ in New Mexico
For the planned 2024 launches, the SRP team is taking things one step further. Los Alamos scientists are working with both X-Bow and Up Aerospace companies to build new rockets that are specially tailored to the Lab’s testing needs. “For the first time in decades, we’re using entirely new rockets to conduct testing,” Judd says. “It’s state of the art.”
The new rocket family from Up Aerospace is called Spyder, while X-Bow is developing a new XL rocket family for modular launch. Whereas decommissioned Department of Defense rockets are commonly used for flight testing, these new rockets will not be made of any parts that are repurposed from older rockets or reused technology. People in the industry often use the term “frankenrockets” to describe rockets assembled out of a variety of used parts.
Judd says everything about the new rocket will be based on the Lab’s specifications. “We get to guide the development of these rockets, so they meet our testing needs,” he says.
The rocket isn’t the only thing that will be new. “We usually take something we already know works and change one thing—but this time everything is new,” Hehlen says. “We will use a new telemetry system, new satellite, new guidance package, new flight vehicle, new designs, and a new thermal protection system. We developed all of these at Los Alamos.”
The team turned to another New Mexico partner to construct a flight vehicle, the cone on the end of a rocket that holds the payload. The flight vehicle holds the components and technology the Lab is testing. Kansas City National Security Campus’ New Mexico branch, located in Albuquerque, built the flight vehicle using a unique process and material.
“We collaborated with the Kansas City team to develop an additively manufactured titanium vehicle,” Judd says. In the past, flight vehicles were built using a forge, which was expensive and did not allow for easy modifications. Judd says the new process represents a dramatic change. “Titanium is light, strong, and has a high melting point. The additive manufacturing process allows us to make rapid modifications. The flight vehicle is 5 feet tall and weighs just 40 pounds. You can pick it up.”
For now, the shiny metallic flight vehicle sits upright in the corner of a small room at Los Alamos National Laboratory, waiting for the day it will soar over New Mexico. Logan Ott, a mechanical engineer, leans over the titanium frame, making final adjustments. “See, the whole thing goes together like this,” he says with one last turn of the screwdriver. “Inside, we’ll put the experiments and equipment we are testing. Then we will take it to the launch site and connect the flight vehicle to the rocket.”
The flight vehicle looks like a simple cone, but construction of this crucial component required innovation. “The Kansas City New Mexico team uses electron beam additive manufacturing,” explains Los Alamos mechanical engineer Justin McGlown, one of the researchers on the project. “It’s similar to building a piece of coiled clay pottery,” he says, lifting the large piece to demonstrate how light it is.
Building the first titanium flight vehicle took a year and a half and required close collaboration between the Kansas City and Los Alamos teams. Along the way, the scientists learned many lessons. “Did you know that you can’t weld titanium in open air?” Judd asks. To address this problem, the Kansas City New Mexico engineers came up with a new approach during the welding process. They have perfected and sped up the titanium flight vehicle manufacturing process and are exploring ways to apply that technology to other projects. “This just demonstrates we can build new things… big things. This faster, more affordable process is a key enabler of responsiveness that wasn’t available 30 years ago,” Judd says.
He adds that the convenience of the Kansas City team’s New Mexico location helped streamline the process. “It was all done by working together. Many, many meetings in person. Changes on the fly in real time… a radical approach of talking to each other—that’s responsiveness too.”
Collaboration within and beyond state lines
Bringing people together lies at the heart of the SRP. Hehlen points out that the project’s size demands collaboration. “We have approximately 100 people working together across 10 to 15 divisions of the Lab.”
Jordan Shoemaker, a research and development engineer for one of the upcoming flight tests, says that the SRP helps make connections on all levels. “We are developing teams and exercising the responsiveness part of our mission. It takes a lot of conversations to get the final design—weekly team meetings with physicists and engineers sitting in the same room working to develop something that works and that can be built.”
“The SRP team isn’t just building connections within New Mexico—they’re reaching overseas. One of the upcoming flight tests will be a joint venture with the United Kingdom (UK) Ministry of Defence. Collaborating with British scientists is not new for Los Alamos. The Lab has worked closely with the UK since the beginning of the Atomic Age, and the two countries signed a bilateral treaty in 1958 providing for the exchange of defense information related to nuclear weapons.
Alan Novak, the Lab’s project manager for the UK flight tests, explains that working with British scientists will further develop both nations’ flight testing capabilities. “The Los Alamos SRP team is proud to continue the long partnership with the UK,” he says. “Working with an allied nation in establishing low cost, high cadence flight test capabilities is mutually beneficial. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we have great teams.”
It grows as it goes
Crescit eundo or “it grows as it goes” is the New Mexico state motto, a statement designed to express hope for the state’s future. This motto also applies to the SRP, given the team’s optimistic attitude and acceptance of failure and risk. “We want to give people the opportunity to try new things and learn by doing,” Judd says, noting the program’s emphasis on training early-career scientists by allowing them to take risks.
When Rayni Jules, an engineer working in the SRP, graduated from Vanderbilt University four years ago, he didn’t plan to join a team that flight tests new nuclear weapons technology, but he says he finds the field exciting. “I’m learning as I go,” Jules says. “It’s high-stakes learning, but it works.”
“We set out to try a new way of doing things,” Judd says. “This is a national lab’s job—high risk, high payoff; doing something no one has ever done before.”
Judd points out that the SRP mission fits in with the Lab’s Manhattan Project legacy. “When this Lab built the atomic bomb—nobody knew how to do that. It was all new.”
Hehlen says managing risk is a balancing act. “Since SRP’s inception, we have been trying to do things at a much faster pace than ever. To do things faster, you must be cognizant of risk and push hard enough to learn as much as possible. We don’t want to be too safe. We are open to expect failures, but we want to fail upward.”
One way the team manages risk is by building redundant data collection systems that include using radio links, satellites, and onboard sensors. “Part of learning from failures is figuring out how to discover when something goes wrong during spaceflight,” Hehlen says.
There have been setbacks and challenges in multiple areas, but Judd points out, “Failure is how you learn.”
With several launches coming up in the next few months, Judd says he’s looking forward to future failures. “Both confidence and humility come from experience. Our question is always, ‘Will it work?’ If it doesn’t work, ‘Why not?’ Failure is a positive result.”
Plus, Judd notes, the program has already achieved some successes. “Just looking at the benefits we’ve realized from working with our many New Mexico partners is exciting,” he says. Soon, the SRP team will watch another rocket carry Los Alamos experiments high into the turquoise sky over the Land of Enchantment. “Each flight pushes harder, and with every flight we learn.” ★