Ball valves are a critical component in a plethora of liquid propellant propulsion systems. The Spanish company PLD Space is considering the usage of these valves in their new series of KER-LOX liquid propellant rocket engines, the TEPREL-C & TEPREL-C Vacuum engines. These will be operating on-board the Miura 5 launch vehicle. The purpose of this research is to re-design and analyze an unoptimized ball valve design, as to make it suitable for cryogenic service while minimizing its mass. The secondary objective of the research is to inquire into the aspects of ball valve operation. This includes investigating the required operating torque of a ball valve and the achievable flow factor as a function of a ball valve's opening angle. The results of this thesis are scripts which can estimate the torque and flow factor values, a methodology to mass-optimize a ball valve, and a re-designed ball valve suitable for cryogenic service.

When searching for life we tend to imagine faraway exoplanets, and rarely do we think of our
own solar system. Although a lot of focus is put on Mars, Venus, our closest neighbor, could
currently host life. Temperatures of 475 ℃ and pressures 95 times what we experience on
Earth don’t offer the best conditions for life on the surface. However at high altitudes the
temperature and pressure drop until, in the area between 50 and 70 km, they approach those
of Earth. Here, amongst a thick deck of sulfuric acid clouds, it is speculated that life could
exist, perhaps in the form of bacteria living in suspended water bubbles.
The purpose of our mission is to design a remote sensing platform to perform in-situ
measurements on the atmosphere and soil composition of Venus, in an effort to learn more
about the planet while looking for specific biomarkers that could be attributed to life.