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RL-10A
The RL10 is a liquid-fuel cryogenic rocket engine built in the United States by Aerojet Rocketdyne that burns cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. Modern versions produce up to of thrust per engine in vacuum. Three RL10 versions are in production for the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V and the DCSS of the Delta IV. Three more versions are in development for the Exploration Upper Stage of the Space Launch System and the Centaur V of the Vulcan rocket. The expander cycle that the engine uses drives the turbopump with waste heat absorbed by the engine combustion chamber, throat, and nozzle. This, combined with the hydrogen fuel, leads to very high specific impulses (''I''sp) in the range of in a vacuum. Mass ranges from depending on the version of the engine. History The RL10 was the first liquid hydrogen rocket engine to be built in the United States, with development of the engine by Marshall Space Flight Center and Pratt & Whitney beginning in the 195 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Centaur (rocket Stage)
The Centaur is a family of rocket propelled upper stages produced by U.S. launch service provider United Launch Alliance, with one main active version and one version under development. The diameter Common Centaur/Centaur III flies as the upper stage of the Atlas V launch vehicle, and the diameter Centaur V is being developed as the upper stage of ULA's new Vulcan rocket. Centaur was the first rocket stage to use liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellants, a high-energy combination that is ideal for upper stages but has significant handling difficulties. Characteristics Common Centaur is built around stainless steel pressure stabilized balloon propellant tanks with thick walls. It can lift payloads of up to . The thin walls minimize the mass of the tanks, maximizing the stage's overall performance. A common bulkhead separates the LOX and LH2 tanks, further reducing the tank mass. It is made of two stainless steel skins separated by a fiberglass honeycomb. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S-IV
The S-IV was the second stage of the Saturn I rocket used by NASA for early flights in the Apollo program. The S-IV was manufactured by the Douglas Aircraft Company and later modified by them to the S-IVB, a similar but distinct stage used on the Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets. The S-IV stage was a large LOX/LH2-fueled rocket stage used for the early test flights of the Saturn I rocket. It formed the second stage of the Saturn I and was powered by a cluster of six RL-10A-3 engines. Each one of the engines supplied of thrust for a total of about . The cryogenic LH2 (liquid hydrogen) and LOX (liquid oxygen Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular oxygen. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an applica ...) tanks were separated by a common bulkhead. The forward bulkhead of the LOX tank formed the aft bulkhead of the LH2 tank. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McDonnell Douglas DC-X
The DC-X, short for Delta Clipper or Delta Clipper Experimental, was an uncrewed prototype of a reusable single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle built by McDonnell Douglas in conjunction with the United States Department of Defense's Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) from 1991 to 1993. Starting 1994 until 1995, testing continued through funding of the US civil space agency NASA. In 1996, the DC-X technology was completely transferred to NASA, which upgraded the design for improved performance to create the DC-XA. Background According to writer Jerry Pournelle: "DC-X was conceived in my living room and sold to National Space Council Chairman Dan Quayle by General Graham, Max Hunter and me." According to Max Hunter, however, he had tried hard to convince Lockheed Martin of the concept's value for several years before he retired. Hunter had written a paper in 1985 entitled "The Opportunity", detailing the concept of a Single-Stage-To-Orbit spacecraft built with low- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saturn I
The Saturn I was a rocket designed as the United States' first medium lift launch vehicle for up to low Earth orbit payloads.Terminology has changed since the 1960s; back then, 20,000 pounds was considered "heavy lift". The rocket's first stage was built as a cluster of propellant tanks engineered from older rocket tank designs, leading critics to jokingly refer to it as "Cluster's Last Stand". Its development was taken over from the Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1958 by the newly formed civilian NASA. Its design proved sound and flexible. It was successful in initiating the development of liquid hydrogen-fueled rocket propulsion, launching the Pegasus satellites, and flight verification of the Apollo command and service module launch phase aerodynamics. Ten Saturn I rockets were flown before it was replaced by the heavy lift derivative Saturn IB, which used a larger, higher total impulse second stage and an improved guidance and control system. It also led the way to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liquid-fuel Rocket
A liquid-propellant rocket or liquid rocket utilizes a rocket engine that uses liquid rocket propellant, liquid propellants. Liquids are desirable because they have a reasonably high density and high Specific impulse, specific impulse (''I''sp). This allows the volume of the propellant tanks to be relatively low. It is also possible to use lightweight centrifugal turbopumps to pump the rocket propellant from the tanks into the combustion chamber, which means that the propellants can be kept under low pressure. This permits the use of low-mass propellant tanks that do not need to resist the high pressures needed to store significant amounts of gasses, resulting in a low mass ratio for the rocket. An inert gas stored in a tank at a high pressure is sometimes used instead of pumps in simpler small engines to force the propellants into the combustion chamber. These engines may have a higher mass ratio, but are usually more reliable, and are therefore used widely in satellites for orbit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryogenic Rocket Engine
A cryogenic rocket engine is a rocket engine that uses a cryogenic fuel and oxidizer; that is, both its fuel and oxidizer are gases which have been liquefied and are stored at very low temperatures. These highly efficient engines were first flown on the US Atlas-Centaur and were one of the main factors of NASA's success in reaching the Moon by the Saturn V rocket. Rocket engines burning cryogenic propellants remain in use today on high performance upper stages and boosters. Upper stages are numerous. Boosters include ESA's Ariane 5, JAXA's H-II, and the United States Delta IV and Space Launch System. The United States, Russia, Japan, India, France and China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ... are the only countries that have operational cryogenic rocket engines ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryogenic Fuel
Cryogenic fuels are fuels that require storage at extremely low temperatures in order to maintain them in a liquid state. These fuels are used in machinery that operates in space (e.g. rockets and satellites) where ordinary fuel cannot be used, due to the very low temperatures often encountered in space, and the absence of an environment that supports combustion (on Earth, oxygen is abundant in the atmosphere, whereas human-explorable space is a vacuum where oxygen is virtually non-existent). Cryogenic fuels most often constitute liquefied gases such as liquid hydrogen. Some rocket engines use regenerative cooling, the practice of circulating their cryogenic fuel around the nozzles before the fuel is pumped into the combustion chamber and ignited. This arrangement was first suggested by Eugen Sänger in the 1940s. All engines in the Saturn V rocket that sent the first manned missions to the Moon used this design element, which is still in use today for liquid fueled engines. Qu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liquid Oxygen
Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular oxygen. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an application which has continued to the present. Physical properties Liquid oxygen has a pale blue color and is strongly paramagnetic: it can be suspended between the poles of a powerful horseshoe magnet. Liquid oxygen has a density of , slightly denser than liquid water, and is cryogenic with a freezing point of and a boiling point of at . Liquid oxygen has an expansion ratio of 1:861 under and , and because of this, it is used in some commercial and military aircraft as a transportable source of breathing oxygen. Because of its cryogenic nature, liquid oxygen can cause the materials it touches to become extremely brittle. Liquid oxygen is also a very powerful oxidizing agent: organic materials will burn rapidly and energetically in liquid o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science Museum, London
The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019. Like other publicly funded national museums in the United Kingdom, the Science Museum does not charge visitors for admission, although visitors are requested to make a donation if they are able. Temporary exhibitions may incur an admission fee. It is one of the five museums in the Science Museum Group. Founding and history The museum was founded in 1857 under Bennet Woodcroft from the collection of the Royal Society of Arts and surplus items from the Great Exhibition as part of the South Kensington Museum, together with what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum. It included a collection of machinery which became the ''Museum of Patents'' in 1858, and the ''Patent Office Museum'' in 1863. This collection contained many of the most famous exhibits of what is now t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thrust
Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that system. The force applied on a surface in a direction perpendicular or normal to the surface is also called thrust. Force, and thus thrust, is measured using the International System of Units (SI) in newtons (symbol: N), and represents the amount needed to accelerate 1 kilogram of mass at the rate of 1 meter per second per second. In mechanical engineering, force orthogonal to the main load (such as in parallel helical gears) is referred to as static thrust. Examples A fixed-wing aircraft propulsion system generates forward thrust when air is pushed in the direction opposite to flight. This can be done by different means such as the spinning blades of a propeller, the propelling jet of a jet engine, or by ejecting hot gases from a rocket ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Delta Cryogenic Second Stage
The Delta Cryogenic Second Stage (DCSS) is a family of cryogenic rocket stages used on the Delta III and Delta IV rockets, and on the Space Launch System Block 1. The stage consists of a cylindrical liquid hydrogen (LH2) tank structurally separated from an oblate spheroid liquid oxygen (LOX) tank. The LH2 tank cylinder carries payload launch loads, while the LOX tank and engine are suspended below within the rocket's inter-stage. The stage is powered by a single Aerojet Rocketdyne-Pratt & Whitney RL10B-2 engine, which features an extendable carbon-carbon nozzle to improve specific impulse. Delta III The DCSS first flew on 3 Delta IIIs, failing two out of two times. A booster failed on the maiden flight and the rocket was destroyed by range safety, causing the loss of the DCSS before ignition. On its second flight, the stage tumbled uncontrollably, inserting the payload into a useless orbit. On the third flight, the stage performed the planned burn but fell short of the target or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlas V
Atlas V is an expendable launch system and the fifth major version in the Atlas (rocket family), Atlas launch vehicle family. It was originally designed by Lockheed Martin, now being operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Atlas V is also a major NASA launch vehicle. It is America's longest-serving active rocket. In August 2021, ULA announced that Atlas V would be retired, and all 29 remaining launches had been sold. , 19 launches remain. Each Atlas V launch vehicle consists of two main stages. The first stage (rocketry), first stage is powered by a Russian RD-180 engine manufactured by NPO Energomash, Energomash and burning kerosene and liquid oxygen. The Centaur (rocket stage), Centaur upper stage is powered by one or two American RL10 engine(s) manufactured by Aerojet Rocketdyne and burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The Star 48 upper stage was used on the ''New Horizons'' mission as a third stage. strap-on booster, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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