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Alcor (rocket Engine)
Alcor (also known as Zebra or 30-KS-8000) was a solid rocket engine, originally developed by Aerojet for the United States Air Force, US Air Force as the third stage of the Athena RTV, Athena test vehicle. Its main appeal was a high mass fraction due to the Aerowrap chamber fabrication process. However, production issues with joint sections limited its use. Alcor engines were used from 1960 to 1977. The original version was used on a series of rockets: Blue Scout Jr, Blue Scout Junior, Astrobee, Astrobee 200, Blue Scout Jr SLV-1C, Ram (rocket), RAM B, Blue Scout Jr SLV-1B(m), Athena RTV, Strypi, Strypi VI and Strypi VIIAR. Initially produced with polyurethane propellant, it transitioned to Polybutadiene acrylonitrile, polybutadiene, leading to the Alcor 1A (23KS-11000) variant. This variant featured improved nozzle, chamber insulation, and expansion ratio, increasing the mass fraction from 0.886 to 0.906. Both Alcor 1 and 1A were used in Astrobee, Astrobee 500 and 1500 vehicles. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athena - Green River Launch
Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretism, syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of various cities across Greece, particularly the city of Athens, from which she most likely received her name. The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens is dedicated to her. Her major symbols include Owl of Athena, owls, olive trees, snakes, and the Gorgoneion. In art, she is generally depicted wearing a helmet and holding a spear. From her origin as an Aegean tutelary deity, palace goddess, Athena was closely associated with the city. She was known as ''Polias'' and ''Poliouchos'' (both derived from ''polis'', meaning "city-state"), and her temples were usually located atop the fortified acropolis in the central part of the city. The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis is dedicated to her, along with numero ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aerojet
Aerojet was an American rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer based primarily in Rancho Cordova, California, with divisions in Redmond, Washington, Orange and Gainesville in Virginia, and Camden, Arkansas. Aerojet was owned by GenCorp, Inc., In 2013, Aerojet was merged by GenCorp with the former Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to form Aerojet Rocketdyne. History Aerojet developed from a 1936 meeting hosted by Theodore von Kármán at his home. Joining von Kármán, who was at the time director of Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, were a number of Caltech professors and students, including rocket scientist and astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky and explosives expert Jack Parsons, all of whom were interested in the topic of spaceflight. The group continued to occasionally meet, but its activities were limited to discussions rather than experimentation. Their first design was tested on August 16, 1941, consisting of a small cylindrical s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal Corps, the USAF was established by transfer of personnel from the Army Air Forces with the enactment of the National Security Act of 1947. It is the second youngest branch of the United States Armed Forces and the fourth in United States order of precedence, order of precedence. The United States Air Force articulates its core missions as air supremacy, intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance, global integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, airlift, rapid global mobility, Strategic bombing, global strike, and command and control. The United States Department of the Air Force, Department of the Air Force, which serves as the USAF's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athena RTV
The Athena RTV was a research missile, developed by Atlantic Research Co., designed to simulate the re-entry conditions of intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was primarily launched from Green River, targeting White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, covering a range of 760 km. Later flights from Wallops Island impacted into the sea. The missile, spin-stabilized, consisted of four stages: the first two lifting the payload to about 200 km, and the third and fourth stages accelerating it to a peak velocity of 6700 m/s on the downward trajectory. Configuration was as follows: two Recruit boosters, one Castor-1 stage, one Pedro (TX-261-3) stage, one Alcor stage and one Alcyone (BE-3B1) stage. The project began in February 1964 and included launches over nine years, with a total of 141 Athena launched to test re-entry vehicles and study their behavior. By August 1965, 85 flights were completed, and the program ran until 1969. The US Army managed the test range, while the USAF ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blue Scout Junior
The Scout family of rockets were American launch vehicles designed to place small satellites into orbit around the Earth. The Scout multistage rocket was the first orbital launch vehicle to be entirely composed of solid fuel stages. It was also the only vehicle of that type until the successful launch of the Japanese Lambda 4S in 1970. The original Scout (a backronym for Solid Controlled Orbital Utility Test system) was designed in 1957 at the NACA, at Langley center. Scout launch vehicles were used from 1961 until 1994. To enhance reliability the development team opted to use "off the shelf" hardware, originally produced for military programs. According to the NASA fact sheet: "... the first stage motor was a combination of the Jupiter Senior and the Navy Polaris; the second stage came from the Army MGM-29 Sergeant; and the third and fourth stage motors were designed by Langley engineers who adapted a version of the Navy Vanguard." The first successful orbital launch of a Sco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astrobee
Astrobee is the designation of series of American sounding rockets with one to three stages. Designed by Aerojet, this family of solid-propellant rockets was conceived as a lower-cost replacement of the liquid-propellant Aerobee. Versions Astrobee 500 The three-stage Astrobee 500 (first stage: ''Genius'', second stage: '' Alcor'', third stage: ''Asp'') has a ceiling of 1000 km, a takeoff thrust of 161 kN, a takeoff weight of 900 kg, a diameter of 0.38 m and a length of 7.80 m. It was launched one time in 1960. File:Astrobee-500.jpg, Astrobee-500 Astrobee 1500 The three-stage Astrobee 1500 (first stage: ''Recruit'', second stage: ''Aero jet'', third stage: ''Alcor'') has a ceiling of 1000 km, a takeoff thrust of 566 kN, a takeoff weight of 5200 kg, a diameter of 0.79 m and a length of 10.40 m. It was launched ten times between 1961 and 1969. File:Astrobee-1500 - 1.jpg, Astrobe 1500 File:Astrobee-1500 2.jpg, Astrobe 1500 File:Astrobee 1500 firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ram (rocket)
The RAM, also known as the 6.5-Inch Anti-Tank Aircraft Rocket or ATAR, was an air-to-ground rocket used by the United States Navy during the Korean War. Developed rapidly, the rocket proved successful but was phased out shortly after the end of the conflict. Design and development In 1950, the outbreak of the Korean War resulted in the United States Navy urgently requiring an aircraft-launched rocket that would be effective against enemy tanks,Parsch 2004 as the existing High Velocity Aircraft Rocket (HVAR) high-velocity aircraft rocket was expected to be ineffective against the armor of IS-3 heavy tanks. The development of an improved rocket was undertaken with remarkable speed; a directive to start work on the project was issued on July 6, 1950, and the first rockets were delivered to the war zone on July 29. Over the course of those 23 days, the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, located in China Lake, California, developed an improved version of the HVAR, with a new, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strypi
Strypi is a family of US re-entry vehicle test boosters, anti-missile targets and sounding rockets. They use a Castor first stage with two Recruit strap-on boosters, plus a range of upper stages. It is 31 inches (79 centimeters) in diameter, and has a maximum flight height of 124 miles (200 kilometers). History It was originally designed and built in 1962 by teams from the Sandia National Laboratories in an around-the-clock program that was a part of a larger nuclear weapons testing program, undertaken prior to the imposition of the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) in October, 1963. It was designed to take a nuclear warhead into space for extra-atmospheric testing. Though it performed this function only once, in Test Checkmate of Operation Fishbowl, it became the "workhorse" of Sandia's rocket research program. The rocket's name came from the efforts of the Sandia teams, which had "taken the tiger by the tail". In 1968, a modified Strypi was used in Material Test Vehicle (MTV) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyurethane
Polyurethane (; often abbreviated PUR and PU) is a class of polymers composed of organic chemistry, organic units joined by carbamate (urethane) links. In contrast to other common polymers such as polyethylene and polystyrene, polyurethane term does not refer to the single type of polymer but a group of polymers. Unlike polyethylene and polystyrene, polyurethanes can be produced from a wide range of starting materials resulting in various polymers within the same group. This chemical variety produces polyurethanes with different chemical structures leading to many List of polyurethane applications, different applications. These include rigid and flexible foams, and coatings, adhesives, Potting (electronics), electrical potting compounds, and fibers such as spandex and polyurethane laminate (PUL). Foams are the largest application accounting for 67% of all polyurethane produced in 2016. A polyurethane is typically produced by reacting a polymeric isocyanate with a polyol. Since a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polybutadiene Acrylonitrile
Polybutadiene acrylonitrile (PBAN) copolymer, also noted as polybutadiene—acrylic acid—acrylonitrile terpolymer is a copolymer compound used most frequently as a rocket propellant fuel mixed with ammonium perchlorate oxidizer. It was the binder formulation widely used on the 1960s–1970s big booster rocket, boosters (e.g., Titan III and Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster, Space Shuttle SRBs). It is also notably used in NASA's Space Launch System, likely reusing the design from its Space Shuttle counterpart. Polybutadiene acrylonitrile is also sometimes used by amateurs due to simplicity, very low cost, and lower toxicity than the more common hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB). HTPB uses isocyanates for curing, which have a relatively quick curing time; however, they are also generally toxic. PBAN based composite propellants also have a slightly higher performance than HTPB based propellants. PBAN is normally cured with the addition of an epoxy resin, taking seve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Titanium
Titanium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in sea water, aqua regia, and chlorine. Titanium was discovered in Cornwall, Great Britain, by William Gregor in 1791 and was named by Martin Heinrich Klaproth after the Titans of Greek mythology. The element occurs within a number of minerals, principally rutile and ilmenite, which are widely distributed in the Earth's crust and lithosphere; it is found in almost all living things, as well as bodies of water, rocks, and soils. The metal is extracted from its principal mineral ores by the Kroll and Hunter processes. The most common compound, titanium dioxide (TiO2), is a popular photocatalyst and is used in the manufacture of white pigments. Other compounds include titanium tetrachloride (TiCl4), a component of smoke screens and cata ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
