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Big Dumb Booster
Big Dumb Booster (BDB) is a general class of launch vehicle based on the premise that it is cheaper to operate large rockets of simple design than it is to operate smaller, more complex ones regardless of the lower payload efficiency.Schnitt, Arthur (1998''Minimum Cost Design for Space Operations''./ref> As referred to by the Office of Technology Assessment: Even though the large minimum-cost design (MCD) booster is less efficient for all around operation, its total cost of operation is cheaper because it is easier to build, operate and maintain, with the benefit of high reliability because of reduced parts counts. History Concept work was led by proponents at Aerospace Corporation, TRW, and Aerojet General, beginning in the late 1950s. The typical approach included maraging steel ( HY-140) for structure, pressure-fed engines using / UDMH, later LOX /RP-1, with pintle injectors scaled up from TRW's Lunar Module Descent Engine (LMDE). The Sea Dragon was an extremely lar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Launch Vehicle
A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pad, launch pads, supported by a missile launch control center, launch control center and systems such as vehicle assembly and fueling. Launch vehicles are engineered with advanced aerodynamics and technologies, which contribute to large operating costs. An orbital spaceflight, orbital launch vehicle must lift its payload at least to the boundary of space, approximately and accelerate it to a horizontal velocity of at least . Suborbital spaceflight, Suborbital vehicles launch their payloads to lower velocity or are launched at elevation angles greater than horizontal. Practical orbital launch vehicles are multistage rockets which use chemical propellants such as Solid-propellant rocket, solid fuel, liquid hydrogen, kerosene, liquid oxygen, or Hypergolic propellants. Launch vehicles are cla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pintle Injector
The pintle injector is a type of propellant injector for a bipropellant rocket engine. Like any other injector, its purpose is to ensure appropriate flow rate and intermixing of the propellants as they are forcibly injected under high pressure into the combustion chamber, so that an efficient and controlled combustion process can happen. A pintle-based rocket engine can have a greater throttling range than one based on regular injectors, and will very rarely present acoustic combustion instabilities, because a pintle injector tends to create a self-stabilizing flow pattern. Therefore, pintle-based engines are specially suitable for applications that require deep, fast, and safe throttling, such as landers. Pintle injectors began as early laboratory experimental apparatuses, used by Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the mid-1950s, to study the mixing and combustion reaction times of hypergolic liquid propellants. The pintle injector was reduced to practice and developed by Sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beal Aerospace
Beal Aerospace was a launch vehicle development company founded in February 1997 by Andrew Beal, president of Beal Bank in Dallas, Texas. Headquartered in Frisco, Texas, the goal of the company was to build and operate a privately developed heavy lift orbital launch vehicle. It ceased operations on October 23, 2000. Company history After being founded in 1997, employment grew to approximately 200 people at the company's peak in late 1999. A rocket engine test facility was successfully established in McGregor, Texas. There, the company conducted liquid-fueled engine tests, added several buildings, and built a vertical test stand. Ambitious plans were made to establish a launch pad on Sombrero Island in Anguilla, and to mass-produce launch vehicles in the Virgin Islands, but environmentalists were fiercely opposed to these development plans. On March 4, 2000, Beal Aerospace conducted a successful test firing of the BA-2 rocket engine, the largest since the NASA Apollo program. Fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pressure-fed Engine (rocket)
The pressure-fed engine is a class of rocket engine designs. A separate gas supply, usually helium, pressurizes the propellant tanks to force fuel and oxidizer to the combustion chamber. To maintain adequate flow, the tank pressures must exceed the combustion chamber pressure. Pressure fed engines have simple plumbing and have no need for complex and occasionally unreliable turbopumps. A typical startup procedure begins with opening a valve, often a one-shot pyrotechnic device, to allow the pressurizing gas to flow through check valves into the propellant tanks. Then the propellant valves in the engine itself are opened. If the fuel and oxidizer are hypergolic, they burn on contact; non-hypergolic fuels require an igniter. Multiple burns can be conducted by merely opening and closing the propellant valves as needed, if the pressurization system also has activating valves. They can be operated electrically, or by gas pressure controlled by smaller electrically operated valves. Care ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TR-106
The TR-106 or low-cost pintle engine (LCPE) was a developmental rocket engine designed by TRW Inc., TRW under the Space Launch Initiative to reduce the cost of Launch service provider, launch services and space flight. Operating on LOX/LH2 the engine had a thrust of 2892 kN, or 650,000 pounds, making it one of the most powerful engines ever constructed. Overview The goal of the development was to produce a large, low-cost, easy-to-manufacture booster engine. The design used a single element coaxial pintle injector, a robust type of injector. It also used ablative cooling of the combustion chamber and nozzle instead of the more costly to manufacture regenerative cooling. The use of the pintle injector allows the engine thrust to be widely Throttleable rocket engine, throttleable, as was the case for the lunar module descent engine. Status Tom Mueller was a lead engineer for development of the LCPE, a 650,000 lbf thrust LOX/LH2 engine. In the summer of 2000, this LCPE wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military technology providers. The firm ranks on the 2022 ''Fortune'' 500 list of America's largest corporations. Northrop Grumman and its industry partners have won the Collier Trophy eight times, most recently for developing the X-47B, the first unmanned, autonomous air system to operate from an aircraft carrier. Northrop Grumman currently leads the development of the B-21 Raider, a long-range, stealth strategic bomber that can drop conventional and nuclear weapons; it will replace Northrop's own B-2 Spirit, the world's only known stealth bomber. Among its other current projects are development and production of the James Webb Space Telescope, an orbiting observatory launched in 2021, and production of the solid rocket boosters for NASA's Space ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Truax
Captain Robert C. Truax (USN) (September 3, 1917 – September 17, 2010) was an American rocket engineer in the United States Navy, and companies such as Aerojet and Truax Engineering, which he founded. Truax was a proponent of low-cost rocket engine and vehicle designs. Life As a teenager, Truax was inspired by Robert Goddard articles in ''Popular Mechanics'' magazine to build his own rockets while residing in Alameda, California. From 1936 to 1939, midshipman Truax tested liquid-fuel rocket motors and published a February 1939 report in Astronautics. In 1938, he showed a thrust chamber that he had constructed to the British Interplanetary Society and wrote technical reports published by the American Rocket Society. Following two years' sea duty, first on and then a destroyer, then-Lieutenant Commander Truax worked at the Engineering Experiment Station at Annapolis in the Bureau of Aeronautics Ship Installations Division under Commander C. A. Bolster. Truax headed the N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sea Dragon (rocket)
The Sea Dragon was a 1962 conceptualized design study for a two-stage sea-launched orbital super heavy-lift launch vehicle. The project was led by Robert Truax while working at Aerojet, one of a number of designs he created that were to be launched by floating the rocket in the ocean. Although there was some interest at both NASA and Todd Shipyards, the project was not implemented. With dimensions of long and in diameter, Sea Dragon would have been the largest rocket ever built. , among rockets that have been fully conceived but not built, it is by far the largest ever and, in terms of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO), equaled only by the Interplanetary Transport System concept (the predecessor to SpaceX Starship) in the latter's expendable configuration with both designed for 550 tonnes. Design Truax's basic idea was to produce a low-cost heavy launcher, a concept now called "big dumb booster." To lower the cost of operation, the rocket itself was launched from the ocean, r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Descent Propulsion System
The descent propulsion system (DPS - pronounced 'dips') or lunar module descent engine (LMDE), internal designation VTR-10, is a variable-throttle hypergolic rocket engine invented by Gerard W. Elverum Jr. and developed by Space Technology Laboratories (TRW) for use in the Apollo Lunar Module descent stage. It used Aerozine 50 fuel and dinitrogen tetroxide () oxidizer. This engine used a pintle injector, which paved the way for other engines to use similar designs. Requirements The propulsion system for the descent stage of the lunar module was designed to transfer the vehicle, containing two crewmen, from a circular lunar parking orbit to an elliptical descent orbit with a pericynthion of , then provide a powered descent to the lunar surface, with hover time above the lunar surface to select the exact landing site. To accomplish these maneuvers, a propulsion system was developed that used hypergolic propellants and a gimballed pressure-fed ablative cooled engine that was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RP-1
RP-1 (alternatively, Rocket Propellant-1 or Refined Petroleum-1) is a highly refined form of kerosene outwardly similar to jet fuel, used as rocket fuel. RP-1 provides a lower specific impulse than liquid hydrogen (LH2), but is cheaper, is stable at room temperature, and presents a lower explosion hazard. RP-1 is far denser than LH2, giving it a higher energy density (though its specific energy is lower). RP-1 also has a fraction of the toxicity and carcinogenic hazards of hydrazine, another room-temperature liquid fuel. Usage and history RP-1 is a fuel in the first-stage boosters of the Electron, Soyuz, Zenit, Delta I-III, Atlas, Falcon, Antares, and Tronador II rockets. It also powered the first stages of the Energia, Titan I, Saturn I and IB, and Saturn V. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is also developing an RP-1 fueled engine for its future rockets. Development During and immediately after World War II, alcohols (primarily ethanol, occasionally metha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Office Of Technology Assessment
The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was an office of the United States Congress that operated from 1974 to 1995. OTA's purpose was to provide congressional members and committees with objective and authoritative analysis of the complex scientific and technical issues of the late 20th century, i.e. technology assessment. It was a leader in practicing and encouraging delivery of public services in innovative and inexpensive ways, including early involvement in the distribution of government documents through electronic publishing. Its model was widely copied around the world. The OTA was authorized in 1972 and received its first funding in fiscal year 1974. It was defunded at the end of 1995, following the 1994 mid-term elections which led to Republican control of the Senate and the House. House Republican legislators characterized the OTA as wasteful and hostile to GOP interests. Princeton University hosts The OTA Legacy site, which holds "the complete collection of OTA publi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UDMH
Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH; 1,1-dimethylhydrazine, НДМГ or codenamed Geptil) is a chemical compound with the formula H2NN(CH3)2 that is used as a rocket propellant. It is a colorless liquid, with a sharp, fishy, ammonia-like smell typical for organic amines. Samples turn yellowish on exposure to air and absorb oxygen and carbon dioxide. It is miscible with water, ethanol, and kerosene. In concentration between 2.5% and 95% in air, its vapors are flammable. It is not sensitive to shock. Symmetrical dimethylhydrazine, 1,2-dimethylhydrazine is also known but is not as useful. Production UDMH is produced industrially by two routes. Based on the Olin Raschig process, one method involves reaction of monochloramine with dimethylamine giving 1,1-dimethylhydrazinium chloride: :(CH3)2NH + NH2Cl → (CH3)2NNH2 ⋅ HCl In the presence of suitable catalysts, acetylhydrazine can be N-dimethylated using formaldehyde and hydrogen to give the N,N-dimethyl-N'-acetylhydrazine, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
