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How are rocket engine pumps powered ?
On Oct 11, 8:32 pm, (Derek Lyons) wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote: Derek Lyons wrote: 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 hehttp://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. :-) I was thinking more along the lines of the coolant going to steam in the cooling passages (a Very Bad Thing). Or taking a slug of water into the turbine (there doesn't seem to be a steam/water seperator[1]). Not to mention the startup/shutdown transients in such a system are going to be... interesting. (On top of the thermal balance issues.) All of which makes me scurry back to proven, existing engines for the time being. Every once in a while I get excited about a new approach to rocket propulson (such as my own excursions into using something like ethylene glycol and separate heat exchangers for cooling). And then I get back to the reality of what might be done in the short term from the total system point of view on a substantial, but limited budget. Len D. [1] And making one that will work both on the ground and under acceleration will be decidely non-trivial. -- Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh. http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/ -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings. Oct 5th, 2004 JDL |
#12
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How are rocket engine pumps powered ?
Len wrote: All of which makes me scurry back to proven, existing engines for the time being. Every once in a while I get excited about a new approach to rocket propulson (such as my own excursions into using something like ethylene glycol and separate heat exchangers for cooling). And then I get back to the reality of what might be done in the short term from the total system point of view on a substantial, but limited budget. No halfway measures! Regenerative liquid metallic sodium cooling! Aye, laddie, that's the ticket. :-) Pat |
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