F-1B engine

On Monday, April 15, 2013 5:40:55 AM UTC-7, Jeff Findley wrote:
Essentially, the F-1B is an F-1A (extensively ground tested, but never

flown) that has been re-worked to be easier to manufacture. The other

notable difference is that the fuel rich exhaust of the gas generator is

dumped "overboard" on the F-1B (the F-1A injected this fuel rich exhaust

into the nozzle to help with cooling).





Links originally posted on ARocket email list:



How NASA brought the monstrous F-1 "moon rocket" engine back to life The

story of young engineers who resurrected an engine nearly twice their

age.



http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...e-monstrous-f-

1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/



----------------------------------------------------------------



New F-1B rocket engine upgrades Apollo-era design with 1.8M lbs of

thrust Dynetics and Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne rebuild the F-1 for the

"Pyrios" booster.



http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...gine-upgrades-

apollo-era-deisgn-with-1-8m-lbs-of-thrust/



----------------------------------------------------------------



Gallery: Behind the scenes at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center We

watched a rocket test and came away with a ton of awesome photographs.



http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...the-scenes-at-

nasas-marshall-space-flight-center/





--

"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would

magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper

than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in

and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer


Without the expertise of those Zionist SS Nazi wizards of Operation Paperclip, we're kinda screwed, with the new generation of our fly-by-rocket wizards hardly prepared to do much of anything truly original and much less cheaper (such as reusable stuff).

On Friday, June 28, 2013 10:11:31 AM UTC+12, Brad Guth wrote:
On Monday, April 15, 2013 5:40:55 AM UTC-7, Jeff Findley wrote:

Essentially, the F-1B is an F-1A (extensively ground tested, but never



flown) that has been re-worked to be easier to manufacture. The other



notable difference is that the fuel rich exhaust of the gas generator is



dumped "overboard" on the F-1B (the F-1A injected this fuel rich exhaust



into the nozzle to help with cooling).











Links originally posted on ARocket email list:







How NASA brought the monstrous F-1 "moon rocket" engine back to life The



story of young engineers who resurrected an engine nearly twice their



age.







http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...e-monstrous-f-



1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/







----------------------------------------------------------------







New F-1B rocket engine upgrades Apollo-era design with 1.8M lbs of



thrust Dynetics and Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne rebuild the F-1 for the



"Pyrios" booster.







http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...gine-upgrades-



apollo-era-deisgn-with-1-8m-lbs-of-thrust/







----------------------------------------------------------------







Gallery: Behind the scenes at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center We



watched a rocket test and came away with a ton of awesome photographs.







http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...the-scenes-at-



nasas-marshall-space-flight-center/











--



"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would



magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper



than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in



and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer





Without the expertise of those Zionist SS Nazi wizards of Operation Paperclip, we're kinda screwed, with the new generation of our fly-by-rocket wizards hardly prepared to do much of anything truly original and much less cheaper (such as reusable stuff).

We're more capable than you imagine Brad.

Dr. vonEschen, at the Ohio State University, taught me and a number of other capable and enthusiastic folks jet propulsion and did a pretty good job of it.

We have tools today that he could only dream of. We have certain knowledge gathered from the ends of the solar system that make our job incredibly easier compared to the lack of knowledge of earlier time. We have a world view infused by the flights of Apollo and the image of Earth from space. We have a communications infrastructure partly based in space that unites the world in a very practical way.

Many may recall vonEschen built the engine for the V1 buzz bomb, the first drone. He also built the Pratt & Whitney RL-10 engine, the first hydrogen fuelled rocket. He did ground breaking work with fluorine in the 1960s and created a tri-propellant rocket that had Isp in excess of 540 seconds! One of the highest specific impulses of any chemical rocket. This consisted of lithium and fluorine primarily with hydrogen added to control thermodynamics.

This rocket used liquid fluorine and liquid lithium which are hypergolic when mixed, and hydrogen.

Lithium Melting Point +180.5 C 0.534 g/cc
Fluorine Melting Point -219.6 C 1.696 g/cc
Hydrogen Melting Point -259.1 C 0.070 g/cc

7:19 Fuel Oxidizer ratio of the Lithium-Fluorine part. Which gives an average propellant density of 1.07 g/cc. Now Lithium-Fluoride with a heat of formation of 598.65 kJ/mol produces a specific impulse of 691 seconds ideally.. A superb rocket!

However, for the publicly reported experiments, talk about mixing in hydrogen to control thermodynamics, reducing the specific impulse to 542 seconds and reducing the overall propellant density. This required the addition of 8.12 H2 molecules for every Lithium-Fluoride molecule formed. So, on a weight basis this is 16.562% Lithium, 44.954% Fluorine, 38.484% Hydrogen, with an average propellant density of 0.165 g/cc.

Now this program was pursued as an alternative and adjunct to the nuclear thermal rocket program. The thrust to weight ratio of this rocket is vastly less than the Rover/Nerva engines. Despite its high complexity, its a lot less complex than a nuclear thermal rocket.

I always wondered in order to reduce complexity of the system, why you couldn't mix things together.

After all, you do need an activation energy to start a reaction. Anyone who struggled to light a camp fire made of logs understands this.

vonEschen said he didn't want to ride in any rocket where looking at it the wrong way might set it off! lol.

I thought that if you could make powdered lithium dust in the right kind of environment and mix it with fluoride ice crystals in a liquid hydrogen fluid, to produce a stable system.

There are some folks down here in New Zealand that are doing this very type of thing. Taking hydrogen peroxide and mixing it directly with graphite, to create a high density monopropellant that has a reasonable specific impulse.

They end up with a milkshake like mix that has a density 1.53x that of water yet has an exhaust speed in excess of 3.1 km/sec.

http://www.rocketlab.co.nz/propulsio...onopropellant/

Here you take a little silver iodide in water, and spray it on to the mixture, and get a nice controllable - hypergolic like mix.

The cool part is the very high density and relative stability of the mix, means very low structural fractions - I mean tank fractions of about 3%. Which give a single stage ultimate velocity of 10.87 km/sec!!

Combining this with an array of 3D printed engines to create a propulsive skin (another of my concepts) we get thrust to weight in excess of 500 to 1. So, we're down in the 3% range overall.

So, the knowledge lives on.

Its up to us to make it grow.

Now, going back to the tri-propellant mix, put just enough liquid hydrogen in the mixture to keep everything chilled enough so that it doesn't blow up! lol. This means instead of 8.1 hydrogen molecules per Lithium and Fluorine molecule, you have only one. This changes the ratios to;

Lithium 25.000% - 0.534 g/cc 0.468165 cc/g
Fluorine 67.857% - 1.696 g/cc 0.400101 cc/g
Hydrogen 7.143% - 0.070 g/cc 1.020408 cc/g

1.888674 cc/g Propellant Volume
0.529472 g/cc Propellant Density

598.65 kJ/mol 28 grams/mol equiv. 6,539.2 m/sec 665.9 sec Isp

Looking at the S-IVB as an example. This stage has an empty weight of 9,559 kg and had a combined tank volume (LOX/LH2) of 326,039 litres. Replacing the J2 engine with a fluorine type engine, installing a compact gamma ray source at the right wavelength to focus energy in the combustion chamber so that the mix promptly detonates on command, and putting the milkshake mix into a common tank (preserving the savings in the removed bulkhead to cover other mass budget items) we have a structure fraction of 5.2% and an Isp of 665.9 seconds!!

This gives an ideal stage velocity of 19.274 km/sec. The Saturn V took the Apollo astronauts through a delta vee of 16.5 km/sec. The S-IVB reconfigured with vonEschen's engine, with my improvements, would be capable of taking 5,492.7 kg of payload - along with the 9,559.0 kg of structure, through this delta vee. Creating a single stage vehicle that took off from Earth, flew to the moon, landed, and returned.

Using miniature, or MEMS based systems to create an array of rockets increases reliability and safety. Shaping them into a propulsive skin gives superb aerodynamic control and permits using the atmosphere to reduce propellant use during early stage of ascent. Reconfiguring the spacecraft from a tubular rocket form to a spherical form, or an oblate spheroid, to take advantage of aerodynamics during early-ascent from Earth, reduces structure weight by 4,700 kg increasing payload weight by this amount to a total of 10,192.7 kg.

This is about three times the payload capacity of the DC 3!!

Imagine a disk 16.02 m in diameter containing 84 passenger seats all facing outward, through their own canopy. A circular cabin 2.2 m tall and 3.74 m wide contain the 84 passengers.

At the centre of the disk is a spherical tank of liquid hydrogen 8.54 m in diameter with the fluorine ice and lithium dust mixed in, super cooled to near freezing hydrogen. The tank extends 3.17 m above the disk at the top and 3.17 m below the disk at the bottom.

Primary thrusters and landing gear surround the tank bottom. The entire assembly is covered by a lightweight heat shield assembly. Attitude control propulsive arrays continue around the aircraft and above. A control cabin along with life-support and other equipment sits above the main cabin.

This system - equipped with suspended animation cabins/couches - with the passengers and crew taking Ex-Rad anti-radiation drugs, would be capable of making it to Mars and back - as well as the moon.