Hypersonic ReEntry Deployable Glider Experiment (HEDGE): A CubeSAT Approach to Low-Cost Hypersonic Research; Bypassing Information Barriers Within Military-Adjacent Hypersonic Research Using Technological Spin-Off

Hypersonic research, regarding all aspects of vehicles traveling at speeds of Mach 5 or above, is a cutting-edge field with the potential to benefit the defense, academic, and commercial sectors and a variety of related fields. However, the growth of hypersonics as a field is stunted by its reliance on the defense industry. Since some of the most immediate benefits of hypersonic research relate to cutting-edge weapons technology, most of the funding dedicated to hypersonic research goes through military channels – and due to national security concerns, that research isn’t made public. This prevents the academic and commercial sectors from benefiting directly from advances in defense-related hypersonic research, compounding the industry’s dependency on military work and crippling its general applicability. My STS research tackled this problem from an industry-level standpoint by investigating methods of information transfer respecting national security concerns, and my technical research aims to demonstrate alternative low-cost methods of hypersonic data collection, making it more accessible to non-military organizations. My STS research investigated the viability of technological spinoff, a process by which a government’s mission-oriented programs ‘spill over’ to the civilian sector. To demonstrate the upside generated by spinoff programs, I investigated the development of nuclear energy and GPS. To identify the practices by which technological spinoff can be harnessed, I delved into the efforts of NASA’s Technology Utilization Program regarding temper foam, fire-resistant PBI fibers, and algae-based dietary supplements. These practices included applying incremental advances to adjoining projects, utilizing existing connections within the defense industry for freer information sharing, and combining flexibility in manufacturing with a civil sales department. Finally, I determined that defense organizations themselves also stand to benefit from utilizing these practices extensively. My technical project, the Hypersonic ReEntry Deployable Glider Experiment (HEDGE), is a multi-year experiment that seeks to overcome the constraints of high costs and technical challenges connected with traditional hypersonic experiments by using a CubeSAT framework to provide a cost-effective and scalable method for collecting data on hypersonic re-entry and flight dynamics. The experiment is to be launched from NASA’s facility in Wallops Island via the RockSat-X program, collecting temperature, pressure, and GNSS position data during the approximately 10-minute re-entry period; data which will be sent through the Iridium satellite constellation to our team back on Earth. Having completed most of the construction and testing at the time of writing, we have determined that the method of experimentation is viable and far cheaper than many contemporary methods of hypersonic data collection – providing a useful alternative to small institutions lacking the extensive resources of the defense industry. My STS research was successful in demonstrating the utility, reliability, and practical feasibility of technological spin-off as a method of bypassing the information barriers in defense-related hypersonic research. Additionally, the testing of HEDGE completed thus far indicates that the structure and aims of the experiment are sound, reasonable, and cost-effective, indicating the viability of this experiment as a method for smaller institutions to conduct low-cost hypersonic experiments. Both advancements slightly reduced the reliance of hypersonics on the defense industry by providing information on how to proceed, however, future work will be necessary for anyone to make any material gains. Such work includes further recreation of HEDGE-style hypersonic experiments, confirmations of the financial feasibility of implementing spinoff-friendly policies, and investigations into more modern spinoff efforts, the latter likely to be conducted by the firms themselves.