Snover and other geeks in here...Rocket Engine cooling
- Thread starter Double"O"
- Start date
Yes he does!
Saved for later, I enjoy stuff like this.
Watched while at work today.
Awesome video! Rockets are such a dichotomy, in that it is a machine that is only going to have to work for a period of minutes, in most cases. But it has to be built as closely to perfect as it can be, or otherwise, typically, you get an unwanted BOOM. So only the highest quality materials, assembled by master mechanics, go into a device that will only work for a short time and then be discarded. Or rebuilt.
Kind of like a Top Fuel dragster, now that I think about it!
Kind of like a Top Fuel dragster, now that I think about it!
Here's a neat idea for the use of a rocket engine. And a few limited protoypes have been built and tested. It's crazy, but it works.
On re-entry, the capsule, orbiter, whatever, builds up very high temperatures. The Apollo capsules all had heat shields. The space shuttle was covered entirely in ceramic composite tiles. The Apollo capsule's heat shield was ablative. As it burned away, it took the heat with it. The Space Shuttle was an example of using materials that can withstand the heat. But it had a huge cost in design, construction, maintenance, etc.
Some clever boy or girl had an idea: why not make a small rocket, built into the nose of the shuttle, that faced directly forward. Then, when you re-enter the atmosphere, you ignite the forward facing rocket. But not to slow down! The rocket is way to small to have any effect on the shuttle's speed. But what it does do is bathe the whole body of the shuttle in a relatively cool 3,500-degree gas. As the speed of it's passage strips the gas off the body of the shuttle, it also takes the atmospheric heating with it. And the constantly firing rocket keeps producing more "cool" gas to replenish what is stripped away.
Neat idea, but it had a bunch of issues, not least of which: how to you ignite a rocket with a Mach-25 tailwind blowing up inside it? What do you use for fuel? You'd want something smoky, like RP-1 (which is basically ultra-refined, ultra-pure kerosene), but you'd need a certain volume of liquid oxygen to feed it. If it's a solid rocket motor, that's fine, but there is no turning it off, no throttling it, etc. And you'd have to have all the additional plumbing, monitoring, telemetry wiring, control circuit, etc, etc, etc.
In the end, it was an idea that didn't work out. But it seems to me with modern materials maybe this idea ought to be looked at, again.
On re-entry, the capsule, orbiter, whatever, builds up very high temperatures. The Apollo capsules all had heat shields. The space shuttle was covered entirely in ceramic composite tiles. The Apollo capsule's heat shield was ablative. As it burned away, it took the heat with it. The Space Shuttle was an example of using materials that can withstand the heat. But it had a huge cost in design, construction, maintenance, etc.
Some clever boy or girl had an idea: why not make a small rocket, built into the nose of the shuttle, that faced directly forward. Then, when you re-enter the atmosphere, you ignite the forward facing rocket. But not to slow down! The rocket is way to small to have any effect on the shuttle's speed. But what it does do is bathe the whole body of the shuttle in a relatively cool 3,500-degree gas. As the speed of it's passage strips the gas off the body of the shuttle, it also takes the atmospheric heating with it. And the constantly firing rocket keeps producing more "cool" gas to replenish what is stripped away.
Neat idea, but it had a bunch of issues, not least of which: how to you ignite a rocket with a Mach-25 tailwind blowing up inside it? What do you use for fuel? You'd want something smoky, like RP-1 (which is basically ultra-refined, ultra-pure kerosene), but you'd need a certain volume of liquid oxygen to feed it. If it's a solid rocket motor, that's fine, but there is no turning it off, no throttling it, etc. And you'd have to have all the additional plumbing, monitoring, telemetry wiring, control circuit, etc, etc, etc.
In the end, it was an idea that didn't work out. But it seems to me with modern materials maybe this idea ought to be looked at, again.
A short, soft back NASA book on the development of the space shuttle I picked up at a Kennedy SC gift shop has like 5 pages on the SSME’s. It covers the entire effort at a high level, but focuses on the last 18 months and first flight (Young & Crippen, 1981 IIRC). Although I designed aircraft at North American I didn’t really know jack about rocket engines. When they flew the shuttle for the first time they were literally holding their breath because they honestly didn’t know the SSME’s were going to work, especially since they had had a massive failure in the test cell in Huntsville just months before. When Columbia reached MECO they actually started crying as their adrenaline crashed. One more example of “if you only knew” what the deal really was.
Later, as I did some work at our Downey, CA facility and learned much more about the shuttle and its subsystems, I was literally shaking my head like, “are y’all f’n kidding me? You actually stood that thing up and lit those Roman Candle SRB’s? Y’all were nuts.”
Truly amazing engineering.
Later, as I did some work at our Downey, CA facility and learned much more about the shuttle and its subsystems, I was literally shaking my head like, “are y’all f’n kidding me? You actually stood that thing up and lit those Roman Candle SRB’s? Y’all were nuts.”
Truly amazing engineering.
Those boys had some tungsten balls for sure
Anyone besides myself pick up Kerbal Space Program 2 by chance? Long live the Kraken!
U.M.
U.M.
I literally have to beat myself in the head with a crowbar to keep away from Kerbal Space Program! I'm not even going to let it register that you said there is a second edition. Damn you!
KSP v2 was just release a few days ago. It's just like the original KSP when it was first released... not all there and very buggy! They are using the player base to beta test it for the most part. Hang onto your money until they work some of the wrinkles out of it...
U.M.
Users who are viewing this thread
