In article ,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote on Mon, 12 Nov 2018
05:45:32 -0500:

In article ,
says...
The one thing I like about their rocket is that they replaced the turbopump
with a electric motor. It's probably only applicable to small engines (?),
but it is innovative. The turbopump is by far the most complicated part in
building a rocket engine, and they've bypassed the complexity by going
electric.


Agreed. Plus they drop battery packs when they're expended, which is a
version of staging. I thought that was pretty clever.


Even dropping the batteries I would think an electric pump would be
heavier than a turbopump. Perhaps that's not significant at this
scale but I'd think it would eat you up quick as you got bigger.

True. Others have studied this in the past. Electric pumps do make
less sense at larger scales. They're pretty much off the shelf though
compared to developing a turbopump, so for a small company looking to
get a vehicle into orbit quickly, they seem to make sense.

As far as I can tell, these smaller launch companies don't have much, if
any, interest in scaling up (at least not to Falcon 9 size). They seem
to be optimizing their operations for a rapid cadence of small launches.

Considering DOD is currently running a rapid launch competition with
requirements tailored to smaller launch vehicles, there seems to be some
interest at this end of the market, even from the US Government.

Jeff
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