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Phelps company’s products areout of this worldTECHNOLOGY: An engine valve designed and built at a small company in Phelps willsteer NASA’s spacecrafts of the future.

By Julie Sherwood, staff writer Posted May. 3, 2009 @ 12:01 amUpdated May 3, 2009 at 3:02 AM

Phelps, N.Y.

A small manufacturing company has beenlauded by the National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration for its work on the next-generation spacecraft and launch vehicle, Ares.

ValveTech, on Phelps Junction Road, designedand built the cryogenic valve — a valve in thevehicle’s engine using liquid methane and liquidoxygen — that will steer the craft.

NASA said Ares will make return trips to themoon and trips to Mars and beyond.

“We were able to deliver the big items,” saidMike Blair, project manager and ValveTech’sengineer, whose name is on the award from

NASA.

The valve delivers the split-second timing needed to steer the vehicle. The valve can open andclose as quick as a “a snap of your fingers,” said Mullally, a company founder and its president.

What are they?

NASA’s Ares rockets, named for the Greek god associated with Mars, will take humans to themoon and later to Mars and other destinations. Astronauts will ride to orbit on Ares I. Ares V willbe the cargo launch vehicle, the heavy lifter of America’s next-generation space fleet. It will be

NASA’s primary vessel for safe, reliable delivery of large-scale hardware to space — from thelunar landing craft and materials for establishing a moon base, to food, fresh water and otherstaples needed to extend a human presence beyond Earth orbit.

SOURCE: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, www.nasa.gov

The valve will control the vehicle, “keeping it from smashing into Mars,” said Blair, who lives inManchester and has been with ValveTech for about six years.

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Mike Blair, Project Engineer at ValveTech, Inc. holdsthe valve being used in the engine of NASA'snewest space craft while General Manager MikeMullally stands by.

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The company received a letter and certificate this past week from NASA’s John H. GlennResearch Center Lewis Field in Ohio, commending Blair and his ValveTech team for, among otherachievements, making a valve exceeding contract requirements.

Because of this, “two additional engines were built as well,” stated Mark Klem, NASA’s projectmanager for the Propulsion and Cryogenics Advanced Development Project.

Blair explained another feature of the valve: It doesn’t pollute.

“Liquid oxygen and liquid methane are very benign on the effects on the environment,” he said.“When they burn, they are clean.”

ValveTech has what NASA and private companies are looking for, said Mullally.

“We have the technical grasp,” he said Mullally, adding they “keep coming back to us.”

ValveTech, founded in 1986, carved out a niche early on designing and manufacturing customcomponents for the aerospace industry. ValveTech’s products have been used in moon probes,sky labs, shuttles and space stations. The company’s customer base includes Boeing, LockheedMartin, McDonald Douglas (now part of Boeing) and Aerojet Redmond. Its customers hail fromacross the United States, South America, Europe, Korea and Japan.

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