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Blue Streak
Just finished reading "De Havilland Blue Streak", by Charles H. Martin,
published by the BIS (recently, I think, although it carries a 2002 copyright date). Blue Streak was Britain's IRBM, canceled as a missile before first flight, but reincarnated as the first stage of the ill-fated Europa launcher. Although Europa was plagued by upper-stage problems, never reached orbit, and ended up canceled, Blue Streak's record was excellent -- 11 flights, all successful with the borderline exception of the first (which pretty much met its test objectives, but would have been a failure if it had been carrying upper stages, because the autopilot lost control about ten seconds before planned engine cutoff due to a LOX slosh problem). The author was one of the Blue Streak engineers, and it shows. Coverage of the program history is weak -- see Nicholas Hill's "A Vertical Empire" for a better view of that -- but there is a lot of technical detail, and perhaps half the book is photographs and diagrams (including some very detailed plumbing diagrams that practically have to be read with a magnifying glass!). The one major omission is the engines proper, which are described only very briefly. This is unfortunate, especially since Martin alludes to a privately-published book by Ray Hancock (of the engine team) which could presumably provide suitable material. That aside, the book is hard to beat as an illustrated technical description of Blue Streak and its supporting facilities. As a technical *history*, though, the book rather falls flat. For one thing, it has a failing shared by a lot of such histories: there is a lot of description of how things worked, but very little discussion of *why* those approaches were chosen. For example, Blue Streak's odd tank configuration -- oxidizer tank an Atlas-style balloon tank, but fuel tank reinforced to be self-supporting -- is described, diagrammed, and photographed, but one looks in vain for a discussion of why it was done that way. One of the most valuable things a participant's history can do is to describe the rationale behind the design, and assess how well the decisions hold up in hindsight. The design rationale seldom gets written down very well, let alone published and evaluated, so any attempt to do this is valuable. Alas, Martin doesn't try. Similarly, a discussion of what problems were encountered and how they were solved is of great interest, and a participant has a much easier time putting such a thing together, because he already knows the big picture. But there is oddly little here along those lines. A look at the Table of Contents reveals a "Static Firings and Flight Trials" chapter 50+ pages long... but it's almost all photographs and drawings, with only about four pages of text, and most of that descriptions of facilities. The only actual description of Blue Streak's firing and flight history is a table with terse, sometimes somewhat mysterious, comments on some of the lines. Hill's description of the flight history is actually considerably better. For a book written by someone who was there, who could speak from firsthand knowledge about what went wrong and how it was handled, this is really disappointing. Bottom line: the book is well worth having if you're a rocket engineer wanting to study how one of the early big rockets worked, or if you're a space historian who would would value a collection of photographs and documents on Blue Streak as a *supplementary* source. If what you want is a history of Blue Streak, though, buy Hill's book first. -- "Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer -- George Herbert | |
#2
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Why, thank you for that, Henry. [form a queue for signed copies.]
I knew Chartles fairly well: I suppose we met about six or seven years ago. Sadly, he died about a year ago during a trip to China, and his widow finished the book off. It was almost complete by then. I think Charles came into the programme at about the time it moved from military to civil, and that shows in the book. It seems to have sprung fully fledged from nowhere. The vehicle was built by de Havilland, but the motors and engine bay came from Rolls Royce - which is probably why there was a good deal less on that. Charles and I often disagreed about what might be called policy. One of the things that I discovered early on whilst researching the book was that the engineers in the firms had no real idea of why the Government was doing whatever it was doing, and were baffled by a lot of the decisions. 'But we made them a super rocket!' 'Yes, but they didn't want a rocket.' 'Why not? It was a jolly good rocket.' That might be something of a caricature, but not too far off. I gave a talk after having visited the ELDO archives in Florence, and we almost ended up arguing. 'I don't remember it being like that.' 'But that's what the documents say.' Having said all that, as Henry points out, it has soon excellent pictures and illustrations. It also gives something of a feel for what it must have been like to work on a project like that. Too often we treat these things as rather abstract entities, forgetting that they involved a lot of work by a lot of people. If you can get a copy, do. It's worth it. Nicholas Hill. Henry Spencer wrote: Just finished reading "De Havilland Blue Streak", by Charles H. Martin, published by the BIS (recently, I think, although it carries a 2002 copyright date). Blue Streak was Britain's IRBM, canceled as a missile before first flight, but reincarnated as the first stage of the ill-fated Europa launcher. Although Europa was plagued by upper-stage problems, never reached orbit, and ended up canceled, Blue Streak's record was excellent -- 11 flights, all successful with the borderline exception of the first (which pretty much met its test objectives, but would have been a failure if it had been carrying upper stages, because the autopilot lost control about ten seconds before planned engine cutoff due to a LOX slosh problem). The author was one of the Blue Streak engineers, and it shows. Coverage of the program history is weak -- see Nicholas Hill's "A Vertical Empire" for a better view of that -- but there is a lot of technical detail, and perhaps half the book is photographs and diagrams (including some very detailed plumbing diagrams that practically have to be read with a magnifying glass!). The one major omission is the engines proper, which are described only very briefly. This is unfortunate, especially since Martin alludes to a privately-published book by Ray Hancock (of the engine team) which could presumably provide suitable material. That aside, the book is hard to beat as an illustrated technical description of Blue Streak and its supporting facilities. As a technical *history*, though, the book rather falls flat. For one thing, it has a failing shared by a lot of such histories: there is a lot of description of how things worked, but very little discussion of *why* those approaches were chosen. For example, Blue Streak's odd tank configuration -- oxidizer tank an Atlas-style balloon tank, but fuel tank reinforced to be self-supporting -- is described, diagrammed, and photographed, but one looks in vain for a discussion of why it was done that way. One of the most valuable things a participant's history can do is to describe the rationale behind the design, and assess how well the decisions hold up in hindsight. The design rationale seldom gets written down very well, let alone published and evaluated, so any attempt to do this is valuable. Alas, Martin doesn't try. Similarly, a discussion of what problems were encountered and how they were solved is of great interest, and a participant has a much easier time putting such a thing together, because he already knows the big picture. But there is oddly little here along those lines. A look at the Table of Contents reveals a "Static Firings and Flight Trials" chapter 50+ pages long... but it's almost all photographs and drawings, with only about four pages of text, and most of that descriptions of facilities. The only actual description of Blue Streak's firing and flight history is a table with terse, sometimes somewhat mysterious, comments on some of the lines. Hill's description of the flight history is actually considerably better. For a book written by someone who was there, who could speak from firsthand knowledge about what went wrong and how it was handled, this is really disappointing. Bottom line: the book is well worth having if you're a rocket engineer wanting to study how one of the early big rockets worked, or if you're a space historian who would would value a collection of photographs and documents on Blue Streak as a *supplementary* source. If what you want is a history of Blue Streak, though, buy Hill's book first. -- "Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer -- George Herbert | |
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Henry Spencer wrote: For example, Blue Streak's odd tank configuration -- oxidizer tank an Atlas-style balloon tank, but fuel tank reinforced to be self-supporting -- is described, diagrammed, and photographed, but one looks in vain for a discussion of why it was done that way. That explains it! I've always wondered why the exterior of the first stage looked so odd: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaver...luestreak4.jpg Was the intention to keep the kerosene on board at all times when the missile was deployed, with the missile stored horizontally? If that were the case, the kerosene tankage would need a fair amount of structural strength. You'd fill up the LOX tank after it was elevated, and it wouldn't need as much strength. Atlas had both its propellants put on board just before launch and after it was elevated (in the case of the "coffin" deployment method) to the launch position, didn't it? Pat |
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Pat Flannery wrote: That explains it! I've always wondered why the exterior of the first stage looked so odd: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaver...luestreak4.jpg I thought about this some more, and I think I've figured it out. The tankage for the LOX storage tank is different out of necessity. Here's why: if you look at the photo of the vehicle, you'll note that the missile's body with the exception of the LOX area uses _external ribs_ for strengthening (looks kind of like the rocket equivalent of the JU-52 or Ford Trimoter), the ribs will work fine in areas of the rocket where both the ribs and underlying skin maintain the same temperature, but in the case of the LOX tank, the ribs are going to stick out from the rocket's body like cooling fins on a motor cylinder- when you tank it up with LOX , the ribs are going to be slower to cool than the underlying skin, as they are primarily surrounded by air and can only cool by conductivity through the part that is welded to the LOX tank skin; this means they won't contract at the same rate as the underlying skin, and will either distort themselves or tear the underlying skin apart as it contracts and tears free of them. It would have made more sense to put them internally, which would have cut down the vehicle's drag during ascent, eliminated the differential cooling problem in the LOX tank area, and allowed them to work as anti-vortex baffles inside the propellant tanks to aid in smooth propellant flow. Have there been cases of "bathtub drain" vortices forming in rocket propellant tanks during flight? The cylindrical shape of the tankage would aid in their formation, particularly if the rocket rolled on its axis during ascent, and given its high propellant feed rate. Pat |
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"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
... Have there been cases of "bathtub drain" vortices forming in rocket propellant tanks during flight? The cylindrical shape of the tankage would aid in their formation, particularly if the rocket rolled on its axis during ascent, and given its high propellant feed rate. Since the Blue Streak was designed in the Northern Hemisphere but tested in the Southern, the design and actual vortices would cancel each other out and none would form. .. .. .. Possibly. |
#6
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In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote: Was the intention to keep the kerosene on board at all times when the missile was deployed, with the missile stored horizontally? No, the planned Blue Streak deployment was in vertical silos, with the missile climbing out under its own power. (This scheme appears to have been devised well before the US ICBM builders started thinking in similar terms, and there may have been some flow of silo technology west across the Atlantic in return for the engine and structure technology that went east for Blue Streak.) Neither propellant was stored on board. At least, that was the *final* version. It's just possible that ideas may have differed early on. -- "Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer -- George Herbert | |
#7
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In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote: but in the case of the LOX tank, the ribs are going to stick out from the rocket's body like cooling fins on a motor cylinder- when you tank it up with LOX , the ribs are going to be slower to cool than the underlying skin, as they are primarily surrounded by air and can only cool by conductivity through the part that is welded to the LOX tank skin... However, I would think that said conductive cooling is likely to be pretty effective, with a cryogenic fluid just the other side of the skin... It would have made more sense to put them internally, which would have cut down the vehicle's drag during ascent, eliminated the differential cooling problem in the LOX tank area... Manufacturing would have been significantly more difficult, though, especially given the need to rigorously exclude dirt and contaminants of all kinds from areas exposed to LOX. and allowed them to work as anti-vortex baffles inside the propellant tanks... Not well, though. Vortex baffles want to be in the middle, not on the walls. Have there been cases of "bathtub drain" vortices forming in rocket propellant tanks during flight? Yes, and it's fairly routine to put a vortex baffle at the tank outlet. -- "Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer -- George Herbert | |
#8
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On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 14:10:55 +0800, "Neil Gerace"
wrote: Since the Blue Streak was designed in the Northern Hemisphere but tested in the Southern, the design and actual vortices would cancel each other out and none would form. ....Dammit, he beat me to it :-( OM -- "No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society - General George S. Patton, Jr |
#9
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The stringers.
They were there mainly as belts and braces to stiffen the structure. The idea was that if for any reason the kerosene tank had to be drained with the LOX still in place, then the missile would still be structurally safe [the missile was intended to be silo based]. In practice they did seem to be redundant, but as far as I know, no one ever bothered to do any subsequent investigation as to whether they were still necessary. There were 48 of them: what that came to in terms of weight I have no idea. Only Blue Streak and Atlas ever used the stainless steel balloon concept. Structurally, they were both very efficient. Ayone any idea why it was never used again [except that von Braun didn't like it]? The other feature that gives Blue Streak its distinctive appearance was the engine bay, which was narrower than the tank (9ft vs 10 ft), with two large panniers. These held nitrogen to pressurise the kerosene tank. The lox tank was pressurised by oxygen obtained from the lox via a heat exchanger. Nicholas Hill OM wrote: On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 14:10:55 +0800, "Neil Gerace" wrote: Since the Blue Streak was designed in the Northern Hemisphere but tested in the Southern, the design and actual vortices would cancel each other out and none would form. ...Dammit, he beat me to it :-( OM -- "No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society - General George S. Patton, Jr |
#10
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Henry is, of course, right again!
The intention was always to launch Blue Streak from underground; trouble was, no one knew how. The launcher design ['silo' was not then in use] evolved from research at the Rocket Propulsion Establishment at Westcott, in Buckinghamshire. Scans from the architect's drawings can be found on my website. After cancellation, a lot of this was passed to the US: Similarities with the Titan II silo are obvious. Both have a hexagonal cross section tube with acoustic linings. Titan II was suspended on springs; I think a hydraulic system was proposed for Blue Streak. The major difference was that the Blue Streak design was a U tube; Titan II a Y shape. Westcott did a lot of studies on the gas flow, and again you can see the carry over from one design to the other. A chap called Barrie Ricketson was in charge of the work: he is still around. He went over to the US after cancellation for a debrief, and later, to watch an in silo launch. His publications on the launcher are available in the National Archives [new fancy name for the Public Record Office]. Nicholas |
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