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The combustion tap-off cycle is a power cycle of a
Blue Origin, 10 August 2018, accessed 15 August 2018]. The
The combustion tap-off cycle is a power cycle of a bipropellant rocket
A liquid-propellant rocket or liquid rocket utilizes a rocket engine that uses liquid propellants. Liquids are desirable because they have a reasonably high density and high specific impulse (''I''sp). This allows the volume of the propellant ta ...
engine
An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy.
Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power gen ...
. The cycle takes a small portion of hot exhaust gas from the rocket engine's combustion chamber
A combustion chamber is part of an internal combustion engine in which the fuel/air mix is burned. For steam engines, the term has also been used for an extension of the firebox which is used to allow a more complete combustion process.
Interna ...
and routes it through turbopump
A turbopump is a propellant pump with two main components: a rotodynamic pump and a driving gas turbine, usually both mounted on the same shaft, or sometimes geared together. They were initially developed in Germany in the early 1940s. The purpos ...
turbines to pump fuel before being exhausted (similar to the gas-generator cycle
The gas-generator cycle is a power cycle of a pumped liquid bipropellant rocket engine. Part of the unburned propellant is burned in a gas generator (or preburner) and the resulting hot gas is used to power the propellant pumps before being exhau ...
). Since fuel is exhausted, the tap-off cycle is considered an open-cycle engine. The cycle is comparable to a gas-generator cycle engine with turbines driven by main combustion chamber exhaust rather than a separate gas generator or preburner.
The J-2S rocket engine, a cancelled engine developed by NASA, used the combustion tap-off cycle and was first successfully tested in 1969.
By 2013, Blue Origin
Blue Origin, LLC is an American private spaceflight, privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Am ...
, with their New Shepard
New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle developed by Blue Origin for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and vertical land ...
launch vehicle, had successfully flight-tested the BE-3
The BE-3 (''Blue Engine 3'') is a LH2/LOX rocket engine developed by Blue Origin.
The engine began development in the early 2010s, and completed acceptance testing in early 2015. The engine is being used on the New Shepard suborbital rocket, ...
engine using a tap-off cycle. According to Blue Origin, the cycle is particularly suited to human spaceflight due to its simplicity, with only one combustion chamber and a less stressful engine shutdown process. However, engine startup is more complicated, and due to the hot gas fed from the main combustion chamber into the turbopumps, the turbine must be built to withstand higher-than-normal temperatures. In contrast, the upper-stage variant of the BE-3, the BE-3U, uses an expander cycle
The expander cycle is a power cycle of a bipropellant rocket engine. In this cycle, the fuel is used to cool the engine's combustion chamber, picking up heat and changing phase. The now heated and gaseous fuel then powers the turbine that drives ...
to power the turbopump, and will be used on the upper stage of the New Glenn
New Glenn is a heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle in development by Blue Origin. Named after NASA astronaut John Glenn, design work on the vehicle began in 2012. Illustrations of the vehicle, and the high-level specifications, were initial ...
launch vehicle.BE-3 test updateBlue Origin, 10 August 2018, accessed 15 August 2018]. The
Reaver 1
Reaver or Reavers may refer to:
Fictional characters
* Reavers (comics), cyborgs in Marvel Comics
* Reaver (''Firefly''), in the 2002 TV series, and the related movie ''Serenity''
* villains in the 2017 film '' Logan''
* monster hunters in the ...
engine in Firefly Alpha
Firefly Alpha (Firefly α) is a two-stage orbital expendable launch vehicle developed by the American company Firefly Aerospace to compete in the commercial small satellite launch market. Alpha is intended to provide launch options for both ...
uses a tap-off cycle. It first flew in September 2021 then made it to orbit on its second attempt in October 2022.
See also
*Expander cycle
The expander cycle is a power cycle of a bipropellant rocket engine. In this cycle, the fuel is used to cool the engine's combustion chamber, picking up heat and changing phase. The now heated and gaseous fuel then powers the turbine that drives ...
* Pressure-fed engine
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 th ...
* Rocket engine
A rocket engine uses stored rocket propellants as the reaction mass for forming a high-speed propulsive jet of fluid, usually high-temperature gas. Rocket engines are reaction engines, producing thrust by ejecting mass rearward, in accordanc ...
* Staged combustion cycle
The staged combustion cycle (sometimes known as topping cycle, preburner cycle, or closed cycle) is a power cycle of a bipropellant rocket engine. In the staged combustion cycle, propellant flows through multiple combustion chambers, and is thu ...
* Gas-generator cycle
The gas-generator cycle is a power cycle of a pumped liquid bipropellant rocket engine. Part of the unburned propellant is burned in a gas generator (or preburner) and the resulting hot gas is used to power the propellant pumps before being exhau ...
References
{{Thermodynamic cycles Combustion Rocket engines Spacecraft propulsion Thermodynamic cycles