engineering

Stone Aerospace

Stone Aerospace is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Stone Aerospace rather than just read about it. In short: Stone Aerospace is an aerospace engineering firm founded by engineer and explorer Bill Stone, located in Del Valle, a suburb of Austin, Texas. History Bill Stone began Stone Aerospace as a part-time consulting business in 1999, at which time he was working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Key takeaways

Stone Aerospace belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Stone Aerospace to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Stone Aerospace from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Stone Aerospace is an aerospace engineering firm founded by engineer and explorer Bill Stone, located in Del Valle, a suburb of Austin, Texas.

History Bill Stone began Stone Aerospace as a part-time consulting business in 1999, at which time he was working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. At the time, Stone already had an extensive background in underground and underwater exploration, which had led him to develop several technologies to further human exploration capabilities. This background, and in particular the success of the Wakulla II Project in Wakulla Springs, Florida, which employed Stone's human-navigated digital wall mapper, lead to inquiries as to whether it would be possible to design an autonomous underwater vehicle, which could explore on its own, making exploration possible where it was not safe or possible for human divers to go. After submitting several proposals to NASA, in 2003 DEPTHX was funded. Shortly thereafter Stone's Piedra-Sombra Corporation began doing business as Stone Aerospace in Del Valle, Texas. After the successful autonomous exploration by DEPTHX of several cenotes in Mexico, NASA then funded the ENDURANCE Project, which spent two seasons exploring frozen-over lakes in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Project VALKYRIE was awarded NASA funding in 2010, and it was field-tested in Matanuska Glacier, Alaska in 2015. Currently, Stone Aerospace is further refining its technologies to produce a full sized cryobot called SPINDLE.

DEPTHX

DEPTHX was a NASA-funded project for which Stone Aerospace was the Principal Investigator. Co-investigators included Carnegie Mellon University, which was responsible for the navigation and guidance software, the Southwest Research Institute, which built the vehicle's science payload, and research scientists from the University of Texas at Austin, the Colorado School of Mines, and NASA Ames Research Center. The DEPTHX vehicle was a fully autonomous underwater vehicle outfitted with scientific sampling equipment designed to expand upon the limits of human underwater exploration, and was successfully tested over two field seasons in cenotes in south east Mexico. Among its most notable accomplishments were the discovery of at least three new divisions of bacteria (the first such discovery by a robotic vehicle) and the first use of three-dimensional simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM).

ENDURANCE

The NASA-funded ENDURANCE project built upon the successes of DEPTHX. The DEPTHX vehicle itself was reconfigured to create ENDURANCE, with a new science payload and new navigation systems added to meet the challenges particular to the frozen-over environment in Antarctica, where it spent two field seasons. The principal investigator for ENDURANCE was Peter Doran of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Co-investigators were Stone Aerospace, John Priscu of Montana State University, and NASA Ames Research Center. ENDURANCE spent two seasons exploring West Lake Bonney in the Dry Valleys, autonomously collecting aqueous chemistry data as well as making high-resolution maps of the lake floor and the portion of Taylor Glacier which interfaces with the lake. The results are thought to be one of the most comprehensive three-dimensional biogeochemical maps of any lake on the planet. The project was the subject of an episode of National Geographic Explorer in 2010 which focused on the goal of discovering life on Jupiter's moon, Europa.

VALKYRIE In 2011, NASA awarded Stone Aerospace $4 million to fund the Phase 2 of project VALKYRIE (Very-Deep Autonomous Laser-Powered Kilowatt-Class Yo-Yoing Robotic Ice Explorer). This project created an autonomous cryobot capable of melting through vast amounts of ice. The 5 kW power source on the surface uses optic fiber to conduct a high-energy laser beam to produce hot water jets that melt the ice ahead. Some beam energy is converted to electricity via photovoltaic cells to power on-board electronics and jet pumps. Phase 2 of project VALKYRIE consisted of testing a scaled-down version of the cryobot in Matanuska Glacier, Alaska in 2015.

SPINDLE

Stone Aerospace is now integrating a prototype submersible called ARTEMIS (4.3 m long, 1,270 kg) with the VALKYRIE technology to produce SPINDLE. This phase will use a full-scale version of the cryobot which will melt its way to an Antarctic subglacial lake —Lake Vostok— to collect samples, and then resurface. The vehicle features a radar integrated to an intelligent algorithm for autonomous scientific sampling and navigation through ice and water. This phase of the project would be viewed as a precursor to possible future missions to an icy moon.

Sunfish Stone Aerospace developed an autonomous underwater vehicle called Sunfish that was used to map flooded caves in Florida (Peacock Springs) in 2017–2018 and Namibia (Lake Guinas, Harasib Cave, and Dragon's Breath Cave) in 2019, and Hudson Grotto in Florida in 2020.

See also Bill Stone – American engineer, caver and explorer DEPTHX – Autonomous underwater vehicle for exploring sinkholes in Mexico ENDURANCE – Autonomous underwater vehicle Shackleton Energy Company – American moon mining company

References

External links StoneAerospace.com

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Stone Aerospace

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Stone Aerospace claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Stone Aerospace before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Stone Aerospace ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Stone Aerospace

In research: Stone Aerospace appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Stone Aerospace in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Stone Aerospace is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Aerospace companies of the United States, Aerospace engineering organizations, Robotics companies of the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Stone Aerospace outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Stone Aerospace in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Stone Aerospace means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Stone Aerospace out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Stone Aerospace in simple terms?

Stone Aerospace is an aerospace engineering firm founded by engineer and explorer Bill Stone, located in Del Valle, a suburb of Austin, Texas. History Bill Stone began Stone Aerospace as a part-time consulting business in 1999, at which time he was working at the National Institute of Standards and…

Why does Stone Aerospace matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Stone Aerospace?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Stone Aerospace.