LEAP Space has recently revealed the first major piece of its Bighorn launch vehicle: the Serrano engine.
The Serrano engine follows three operating principles: simplicity, responsiveness, and mass production. Its design aims to deliver high performance while simplifying production.
Additive manufacturing lets engineers merge what would normally be hundreds of separately machined and assembled engine parts into a single, consolidated structure.
Using large-scale DMLS 3D printing, the single-print thrust chamber enables rapid iteration. Its design and build speeds fit the company’s modern design and testing approach.
The Colorado-based launch company is betting that a simplified, additively manufactured engine architecture can make rockets mass-producible enough to serve both on-demand orbital launch and sub-hour point-to-point cargo delivery. Serrano now moves into integration and hot-fire testing. This stage will determine whether the printed chamber can hold up to Bighorn’s intended mission profile. LEAP is designing it to carry payloads to, through and from space.
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