On Sep 7, 3:53 am, Pat Flannery wrote:

Note that the ROTON engine never got built, so it's difficult to know
how practical the concept would have proved in reality.

The original ROTON design was a very large design that had to feed two
fluids at a time. That is tricky as you can'tt afford one to leak
into the other. Instead I am thinking of building a single feed
engine that would only be 50 cm in radius or probably less. Seems
more do-able.

Long time back the US played with a somewhat similar engine to power the
XP-79 rocket fighter (in this case the spinning combustion chambers
would shaft-drive the engine's fuel pump) and that never was made to
work correctly, so it was canceled.

Thanks for the pointer.

Another problem with the ROTON engine could be how burning would behave
in the combustion chambers under the centrifugal force of their spinning
at high RPM.

Did not think of that, but the burning itself may not be the problem
but rather the injector design could prove to be a real problem.

Earl Colby Pottinger