(ed kyle) wrote in
om:

(quasarstrider) wrote in message
. com...

There is something I have wondered for a while... Glancing at old
photos of Beal rocket engine tests, the nozzle looks eerily familiar
to the one SpaceX uses in their first-stage engine Merlin. I know the
first stage in Falcon 1 has a pump engine while Beal's rockets were
exclusively pressure-fed (although the second stage in Falcon 1 is
also pressure-fed) and the fuels aren't the same, but the feeling's
still there.
Then add the fact that SpaceX uses Beal's former testing facility
in Texas to test Merlin. So, err, are some of the same people
involved, or am I just seeing things that really aren't there?

Some additional thoughts on this. I think Musk and Beal must
have been influenced by the Big Dumb Rocket ideas reviewed,
for example, at:

"http://www.optipoint.com/far/far8.htm"

Both the SpaceX Merlin and Kestrel engines use the pintle
injector design pioneered for the simple, reliable lunar
module engines. TRW scaled the idea up during a late 1960's
in-house study that showed cheap, really powerful versions
of such engines were possible. Kestrel, especially, seems
to be based on LM engine ideas. Maybe some retired TRW,
STL, Aerojet, or Bell people are working for Musk?

TRW went a lot further than studies: they demonstrated a 650,000
lb/thrust cyrogenic engine a few years ago based on the pintle
injector and an ablative combustion chamber and nozzle.
Honeywell built the foil bearing (fluid bearing?) turbopumps for them.
Who wants the .pdf file describing the TR106? TRW's space division
has been sold and I can't find it on Northrop-Grumman's Web
site.

The pintle design seem to be working for SpaceX and I'm a little
surprised it hasn't caught on in general use, but I'm sure people are
paying attention to what's been going on.

--Damon