While the lower stages of a multi-stage rocket vehicle are discarded before the machine leaves the atmosphere, the upper stages and the spacecraft they carry, if there is a distinction, need to operate in space. Such “space vehicles” generally need “restart-able” rocket engines that can be turned on or off, which is a somewhat...
As far as storable propellant engines used on spacecraft themselves go, one of the classic examples was the “Service Propulsion System (SPS)” for the Apollo Command & Service Module (CSM). The SPS generated 91.2 kN (9,300 kg / 20,500 lb) of thrust. It was a fully restartable pressure-fed engine, with no turbopumps, with redundant...
Work on large solid-fuel grains for the Minuteman and Polaris programs also led to the development of the first all-solid-fuel space launch vehicle, the LTV “Scout”, which would have a long career putting small payloads into space. In addition, the Minuteman development effort had a direct connection to the development of segmented solid rocket...
The primary Soviet rocket engines in the early days of the Space Race were the “RD-107″ and “RD-108″. These were basically “sister” designs, each with four thrust chambers and a single turbopump, differing in that the RD-107 had two vernier engines, while the RD-108 had four. They both produced 907.4 kN (92,500 kgp /...
As with liquid-fuel rocket engines, trying to write a detailed history of solid-fuel rocket engines here would be impractical, and a short survey will have to do. The first modern solid-fuel rockets were developed in the late 1940s, for use as RATO boosters and to power relatively small missiles, such as air-to-air missiles (AAMs)....
The first liquid-fuel rocket engine to be produced in quantity was the engine for the German V-2 missile, which burned LOX and ethanol and produced 245.25 kN (25,000 kgp / 55,000 pounds) of thrust, which was far beyond the capabilities of any other rocket engine available at the time. After the war, however, substantially...
A rocket vehicle obviously consists of some sort of airframe or casing mounting a rocket engine and providing storage for propellants. Less obviously, it must also carry guidance and control systems. Holiday firework rockets simply have a stick or fins to keep them flying flying straight. Unguided rocket projectiles used by combat aircraft to...
Monopropellant thrusters are much simpler and, in principle, more reliable than a bipropellant system, but they are much less efficient, with a monopropellant hydrazine thruster having a specific impulse less than 70% that of LOX-RP. Whether bipropellant or monopropellant, the thrusters are fed using a pressure or electric pump system, as the high propellant...
While conventional chemical rocket engines continue to be refined, work has also been performed on new configurations, such as the “linear aerospike” and “rocket-based combined cycle” engines. NASA was working with private industry on an aerospike engine for the cancelled X-33 experimental reusable launch vehicle. An aerospike engine is very different in appearance from...
Solid-fuel rockets go back for centuries, and their fundamental form has remained much the same. They contain propellant formed in a solid cylindrical block, or “grain”, normally with a hole up the centre to ensure uniform burning of the propellant. The hole can have a variety of configurations that give different “thrust profiles”: for...