Lunar Locals. Torrance company’s tanks power first-ever private moon landers
by Garth Meyer
If you want to launch a payload into space, there is a man to call in Torrance.
He’s got the liner-less tank and propulsion components you need at an office/warehouse on Lomita Boulevard.
Four of these tanks are on the moon right now, still connected to two landing crafts.
Andy Szilagyi is vice president of engineering at Scorpius Space Launch Company, which provided the power for the first private lunar lander missions, in February 2024, and again this March.
“Our tanks were instrumental in making that happen,” Szilagyi said.
Scorpius is an offshoot of Microcosm, a Torrance company he first worked for in 2007. Ten years later, Szilagyi became more involved with its subsidiary, designing software to analyze space propulsion tanks, or “pressure vessels.”
Two Scorpius tanks, one filled with liquid oxygen, the other methane, were on the recent moon lander missions, led by Intuitive Machines of Houston, Texas.
“Two fluids meet with each other that create propulsion. Methane is oxidized by oxygen, which produces an impulse,” Szilagyi said. “It’s like a kick. You’re giving the (soccer) ball an impulse. Hot gas gives the vehicle a kick. ”
The patented, carbon fiber tanks are 50 inches in diameter.
“The length is about the same,” said Szilagyi, who lives in Palos Verdes. “They’re kind of squatty.”
Materials help make them stand out from competitors. Carbon fiber, with no metal, means the tanks are lighter – and the lighter their structure, the more payload can be hauled in space.
Other pressure vessels, Szilagyi pointed out, have a metallic layer, which expands and contracts with temperature.
“For quite awhile, it was difficult to attract customers for our type of tanks,” he said, referring to a long sequence of failures by large aerospace companies to develop this technology, with government support.
“Andy had a central role in the development of this product,” said Marcus Rufer, Scorpius CEO. “Inventors rarely become successful people; they’re not driven by commercially-viable applications. There is an old saying, ‘the best inventors usually die poor.’ But Andy can see the bigger picture. His range goes from philosophy to nuclear particles.”
Another Scorpius client, Vaya Space, of South Florida, is refining a launch vehicle to haul a variety of payloads, for a hoped-for first launch in 2026.
A launch vehicle is like a flatbed truck, taking a spacecraft into and/or through space.
“It’s a piggyback kind of industry; the spacecraft piggybacks on the launch providers,” Szilagyi said.
On the missions for Intuitive, the Scorpius tanks were attached to its Nova-C lander. On both of the trips, the lander fell on its side on the moon, curtailing the mission.
“There’s a lot of learning that they have to do on these missions too,” Szilagyi said. “They may not stack our tanks on top of each other for the next launch.”
Intuitive is now designing its Nova-D, the next generation lander, which is much larger.
“They’re likely to have four of our tanks on board,” Szilagyi said.
Nova-C still has more missions to go, though.
Scorpius has also built small tanks, four to five inches in diameter, for oxygen in the medical field.
Over its 26 years in Torrance, the company has varied from 10-30 employees, with 12 now.
They make the tanks on site.
“We don’t know who’s going to come out ahead. I’m guessing Intuitive (over Vaya) will be next out of the gate,” Szilagyi said, of the next client launch.
In the longer term, the Scorpius tanks could serve another space industry.
“Asteroid mining; people want to take spacecraft like these landers (to do this). Our tanks could propel them,” he said.
Szilagyi came to America at age 19 from Romania, then went to Harvard for a degree in physics, before a PhD. at M.I.T., also in physics.
He left Bucharest in 1972, with his brother, mother and grandmother. They spent five months in Italy where Andy studied at the Oversees School of Rome, an American school predominantly for refugees. A counselor guided him to apply to Harvard.
“Fortunately, I got into some of these good places,” he said.
He had already learned English.
“If I had been a year older, I would not have had the opportunity,” Szilagyi said.
His fifth grade year in Romania was the first time it was permissible to choose a foreign language other than Russian.
The family was placed in New York.
“The famous melting pot,” Szilagyi said.
For them it was East Flatbush, Brooklyn, then Borough Park.
Szilagyi’s first job out of M.I.T. was for Honeywell in Lexington, Mass., working on night vision for the Reagan era “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative – sensors for missiles to detect other missiles in darkness and fog.
Then he moved to Santa Barbara to work for Hughes Aircraft and the Cold War ended. He later designed infrared furnaces in Fullerton, and got into telecommunications in Palo Alto.
Szilagyi came to the South Bay with 43 patents.
While at Microcosm, something across the hall drew his eye.
“The Scorpius subsidiary had some interesting needs,” he said.
The company spun off in 1999. Both it and Microcosm are still housed in the same building.
“We started the all-composite pressure vessels,” Scorpius CEO Rufer said. “We have pioneered this technology from the ground up, starting in 2004-05.”
“Andy got more and more involved. He’s evolved software that can literally see layer-by-layer; he can analyze and predict, to build a certain product to absorb a certain pressure.”
“In the technology world, it’s rare to have a great CAD designer, a great engineer, a great scientist… It’s very rare to have someone who can combine all of that,” Rufer said. “Andy can see through these adjacent fields. I look at him as the resident brain.”
Scorpius tanks first went on the market in 2008. They can withstand minus 300 degrees and up to 170 degrees Fahrenheit.
What may be next in the field of space launch vehicles?
“Your tank is becoming your load-bearing structure,” Rufer said.
“Like a chassis,” Szilagyi explained. “These tanks have strong appendages built into the structure. That way you can save mass.”
The prototypes are also built on site, across from Torrance Memorial Hospital, on the 20,000 square foot Scorpius floor.
“I’m happy that my work has found some decent success going to the moon,” Szilagyi said. ER
