Or what you are going to call it, an unrealized proposal from Aerojet around 1984. PDF Found on NTRS.
The idea was to have two turbopumps (like on SSME), but instead operate on the expander cycle. Two heat exchangers, two turbines, two pumps. One for each propellant.
This is a LOX-hydrogen engine. Also this means that since [...]
Archive for the ‘engines’ Category
The Sandman
Posted in RLV:s, Transportation, engines, industry, tagged Armadillo, hop, RLV, Suborbital on Tuesday 2009.11.03 | Leave a Comment »
NK-33
Posted in Motivation, engines, industry, tagged NK-33, Turbopump, Liquid, Rocket Engine, Russia, Kuznetsov on Saturday 2009.10.03 | 13 Comments »
It seems to be such a marvelous rocket engine. A high thrust to weight, high ISP high tolerance design that is still top of the line after sitting forty years in storage – it will be used for Orbital’s Taurus II as a first stage engine.
I drew a diagram on how the engine works internally.
It’s [...]
Masten
Posted in Motivation, RLV:s, engines, tagged 2009, Armadillo, LLC, Masten, RLV, VTVL on Thursday 2009.09.17 | Leave a Comment »
Made huge strides in the last few days. A half-L1 done. They might be able to compete with Armadillo on L2, though I’m somewhat skeptical since they’re only going to assemble the new L2 vehicle soon.
Suddenly looks like there are two viable big VTVL sounding rocket companies!
Airline vs Spaceline Safety
Posted in Architecture, Homebuilt, RLV:s, Suborbital, Transportation, engines, industry, tagged Suborbital, XCOR, Lynx, Ethanol, Methane, Safety, Airline on Wednesday 2009.08.19 | 1 Comment »
62 mile club has a writeup of a beta “customer qualification program” for XCOR’s Lynx suborbital craft. This highlights the differences and current state of play. Rocketships will not be as safe as airliners in the near future, and they don’t need to be. There are millions of things that are less safe than airliners [...]
Hydrocarbon Scramjet Already Flown
Posted in NASA, RLV:s, Suborbital, airplane, engines, industry, tagged atk, hydrocarbon, hypersonic, scramjet on Tuesday 2009.08.11 | Leave a Comment »
By ATK in 2005. Shows how little I know.
EDIT: Spaceref had the details, Mach 5.5.
(Scramjets are still not a space application.)
Skylon
Posted in Architecture, ESA, Energy, Motivation, RLV:s, Science, Suborbital, Transportation, airplane, engines, industry, tagged liquid air, sabre, skylon, ssto, varvill on Tuesday 2009.03.03 | Leave a Comment »
Nice video explanation of the SABRE engine by Richard Varvill.
In a sense, it boils down to the problem of changing the hot fast low pressure intake air flow to a cold slow high pressure flow.
In the Sabre engine, techniques somewhat similar to liquid air plants are used: there is a compressor, that is coupled to [...]
Making Rotary Engines
Posted in RLV:s, engines, tagged aluminum casting, CNC, machining, mazda, rotary, wankel on Sunday 2008.09.28 | Leave a Comment »
Fascinating videos showing a little how Mazda makes them. Technically the Wankel engine is a simple one but it certainly doesn’t look simple to manufacture. Via Rotarynews.com.
TrueZer0 Lunar Lander Challenge Team
Posted in Models, RLV:s, engines, tagged lunar lander challenge, truezer0, truezero on Tuesday 2008.09.09 | Leave a Comment »
Truezero is using metric units (I hear liters mentioned on one video)! That must save a lot of trouble, compare that to Flometrics’ engineering students measuring flow rates at gallons per minute. Truezero has a quite different approach otherwise too with careful planning and then construction. Interesting to see [...]
