Derek Lyons wrote:
If you want to see a wild rocket engine design, check out the one from
Sanger's WW II Antipodal Bomber design from WWII
This uses steam generated by water flowing around the combustion chamber
to drive the turbopump, then cools the steam back into water by running
it through a heat exchanger surrounded by Lox - this heats the Lox and
improves the engine's overall efficiency; there are drawings of it on
pages 9 and 10 of the PDF he http://www.astronautix.com/data/saenger.pdf
As well as a description of how it works afterwards.
Although heavy, it's an intriguing concept.


It would be fun to make work too...


Yeah, everything had better work just right or the Lox heat exchangers
blow up from too much Lox vaporization, or the steam coming from the
turbopump turns into ice inside the heat exchanger from over-cooling and
clogs it, at which point the combustion chamber melts. :-)

Pat