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91-440: The staged combustion cycle (sometimes known as topping cycle , preburner cycle , or closed cycle ) is a power cycle of a bipropellant rocket engine . In the staged combustion cycle, propellant flows through multiple combustion chambers , and is thus combusted in stages. The main advantage relative to other rocket engine power cycles is high fuel efficiency , measured through specific impulse , while its main disadvantage

182-612: A German translation of a book by Tsiolkovsky of which "almost every page...was embellished by von Braun's comments and notes." Leading Soviet rocket-engine designer Valentin Glushko and rocket designer Sergey Korolev studied Tsiolkovsky's works as youths and both sought to turn Tsiolkovsky's theories into reality. From 1929 to 1930 in Leningrad Glushko pursued rocket research at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL), where

273-631: A book in 1923 suggesting the use of liquid propellants. In Germany, engineers and scientists became enthralled with liquid propulsion, building and testing them in the late 1920s within Opel RAK , the world's first rocket program, in Rüsselsheim. According to Max Valier 's account, Opel RAK rocket designer, Friedrich Wilhelm Sander launched two liquid-fuel rockets at Opel Rennbahn in Rüsselsheim on April 10 and April 12, 1929. These Opel RAK rockets have been

364-527: A cylindrical tunnel leading to the androgynous peripheral docking unit (APAS-89). Unlike the Space Shuttle, the docking compartment for Buran would feature an extendable tunnel to increase clearance between orbiter and station. Another hatch, facing into the payload bay, was designed to support extravehicular activities. The docking module was not installed for 1K's only spaceflight, however the Kristall module of

455-527: A design called full-flow staged combustion . Staged combustion designs can be either single-shaft or twin-shaft . In the single-shaft design, one set of preburner and turbine drives both propellant turbopumps. Examples include the Energomash RD-180 and the Blue Origin BE-4 . In the twin-shaft design, the two propellant turbopumps are driven by separate turbines, which are in turn driven by

546-407: A fuel-rich layer is created at the combustion chamber wall. This reduces the temperature there, and downstream to the throat and even into the nozzle and permits the combustion chamber to be run at higher pressure, which permits a higher expansion ratio nozzle to be used which gives a higher I SP and better system performance. A liquid rocket engine often employs regenerative cooling , which uses

637-682: A higher mass ratio, but are usually more reliable, and are therefore used widely in satellites for orbit maintenance. Thousands of combinations of fuels and oxidizers have been tried over the years. Some of the more common and practical ones are: One of the most efficient mixtures, oxygen and hydrogen , suffers from the extremely low temperatures required for storing liquid hydrogen (around 20 K or −253.2 °C or −423.7 °F) and very low fuel density (70 kg/m or 4.4 lb/cu ft, compared to RP-1 at 820 kg/m or 51 lb/cu ft), necessitating large tanks that must also be lightweight and insulating. Lightweight foam insulation on

728-588: A letter to El Comercio in Lima in 1927, claiming he had experimented with a liquid rocket engine while he was a student in Paris three decades earlier. Historians of early rocketry experiments, among them Max Valier , Willy Ley , and John D. Clark , have given differing amounts of credence to Paulet's report. Valier applauded Paulet's liquid-propelled rocket design in the Verein für Raumschiffahrt publication Die Rakete , saying

819-764: A liquid-fueled rocket as understood in the modern context first appeared in 1903 in the book Exploration of the Universe with Rocket-Propelled Vehicles by the Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky . The magnitude of his contribution to astronautics is astounding, including the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation , multi-staged rockets, and using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen in liquid propellant rockets. Tsiolkovsky influenced later rocket scientists throughout Europe, like Wernher von Braun . Soviet search teams at Peenemünde found

910-661: A maximum payload of 30 tonnes, for a maximum launch mass of 105 tonnes. Mass breakdown Dimensions Propulsion Unlike the US Space Shuttle , which was propelled by a combination of solid boosters and the orbiter's own liquid-propellant engines fuelled from a large tank, the Soviet/Russian Energia launch system used thrust from each booster's RD-170 liquid oxygen/kerosene engine (each with four nozzles), developed by Valentin Glushko , and another four RD-0120 liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engines attached to

1001-462: A new research section was set up for the study of liquid-propellant and electric rocket engines . This resulted in the creation of ORM (from "Experimental Rocket Motor" in Russian) engines ORM-1  [ ru ] to ORM-52  [ ru ] . A total of 100 bench tests of liquid-propellant rockets were conducted using various types of fuel, both low and high-boiling and thrust up to 300 kg

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1092-447: A number of small diameter holes arranged in carefully constructed patterns through which the fuel and oxidizer travel. The speed of the flow is determined by the square root of the pressure drop across the injectors, the shape of the hole and other details such as the density of the propellant. The first injectors used on the V-2 created parallel jets of fuel and oxidizer which then combusted in

1183-501: A temporary orbit before the orbiter separated as programmed. After boosting itself to a higher orbit and completing two orbits around the Earth, the ODU ( Russian : Объединенная Двигательная Установка , romanized :  Ob"yedinennaya Dvigatel'naya Ustanovka , lit.   'Combined Propulsion System') engines fired automatically to begin the descent into the atmosphere, return to

1274-399: A variety of engine cycles . Liquid propellants are often pumped into the combustion chamber with a lightweight centrifugal turbopump . Recently, some aerospace companies have used electric pumps with batteries. In simpler, small engines, an inert gas stored in a tank at a high pressure is sometimes used instead of pumps to force propellants into the combustion chamber. These engines may have

1365-428: A vehicle using liquid oxygen and gasoline as propellants. The rocket, which was dubbed "Nell", rose just 41 feet during a 2.5-second flight that ended in a cabbage field, but it was an important demonstration that rockets using liquid propulsion were possible. Goddard proposed liquid propellants about fifteen years earlier and began to seriously experiment with them in 1921. The German-Romanian Hermann Oberth published

1456-624: A wide range of flow rates. The pintle injector was used in the Apollo Lunar Module engines ( Descent Propulsion System ) and the Kestrel engine, it is currently used in the Merlin engine on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. The RS-25 engine designed for the Space Shuttle uses a system of fluted posts, which use heated hydrogen from the preburner to vaporize the liquid oxygen flowing through

1547-410: Is engineering complexity . Typically, propellant flows through two kinds of combustion chambers; the first called preburner and the second called main combustion chamber . In the preburner, a small portion of propellant, usually fuel-rich, is partly combusted under non- stoichiometric conditions , increasing the volume of flow driving the turbopumps that feed the engine with propellant. The gas

1638-423: Is liquid hydrogen which has a much lower density, while requiring only relatively modest pressure to prevent vaporization . The density and low pressure of liquid propellants permit lightweight tankage: approximately 1% of the contents for dense propellants and around 10% for liquid hydrogen. The increased tank mass is due to liquid hydrogen's low density and the mass of the required insulation. For injection into

1729-472: Is a relatively low speed oscillation, the engine must be designed with enough pressure drop across the injectors to render the flow largely independent of the chamber pressure. This pressure drop is normally achieved by using at least 20% of the chamber pressure across the injectors. Nevertheless, particularly in larger engines, a high speed combustion oscillation is easily triggered, and these are not well understood. These high speed oscillations tend to disrupt

1820-514: Is applied to the liquid (and sometimes the two propellants are mixed), then it is expelled through a small hole, where it forms a cone-shaped sheet that rapidly atomizes. Goddard's first liquid engine used a single impinging injector. German scientists in WWII experimented with impinging injectors on flat plates, used successfully in the Wasserfall missile. To avoid instabilities such as chugging, which

1911-680: Is less explosive than LH 2 . Many non-cryogenic bipropellants are hypergolic (self igniting). For storable ICBMs and most spacecraft, including crewed vehicles, planetary probes, and satellites, storing cryogenic propellants over extended periods is unfeasible. Because of this, mixtures of hydrazine or its derivatives in combination with nitrogen oxides are generally used for such applications, but are toxic and carcinogenic . Consequently, to improve handling, some crew vehicles such as Dream Chaser and Space Ship Two plan to use hybrid rockets with non-toxic fuel and oxidizer combinations. The injector implementation in liquid rockets determines

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2002-399: Is not as high as that of RP1. This makes it specially attractive for reusable launch systems because higher density allows for smaller motors, propellant tanks and associated systems. LNG also burns with less or no soot (less or no coking) than RP1, which eases reusability when compared with it, and LNG and RP1 burn cooler than LH 2 so LNG and RP1 do not deform the interior structures of

2093-445: Is one of the few substances sufficiently pyrophoric to ignite on contact with cryogenic liquid oxygen . The enthalpy of combustion , Δ c H°, is −5,105.70 ± 2.90 kJ/mol (−1,220.29 ± 0.69 kcal/mol). Its easy ignition makes it particularly desirable as a rocket engine ignitor . May be used in conjunction with triethylborane to create triethylaluminum-triethylborane, better known as TEA-TEB. The idea of

2184-434: Is then injected into the main combustion chamber and combusted completely with the other propellant to produce thrust . The main advantage is fuel efficiency due to all of the propellant flowing to the main combustion chamber, which also allows for higher thrust. The staged combustion cycle is sometimes referred to as closed cycle , as opposed to the gas generator, or open cycle where a portion of propellant never reaches

2275-578: The DLR (German Aerospace Center) in the frame of the SpaceLiner project, up to 1000 flights are expected for Raptor from SpaceX. Further, the full-flow cycle eliminates the need for an interpropellant turbine seal normally required to separate oxidizer-rich gas from the fuel turbopump or fuel-rich gas from the oxidizer turbopump, thus improving reliability. Since the use of both fuel and oxidizer preburners results in full gasification of each propellant before entering

2366-743: The Me 163 Komet in 1944-45, also used a Walter-designed liquid rocket engine, the Walter HWK 109-509 , which produced up to 1,700 kgf (16.7 kN) thrust at full power. After World War II the American government and military finally seriously considered liquid-propellant rockets as weapons and began to fund work on them. The Soviet Union did likewise, and thus began the Space Race . In 2010s 3D printed engines started being used for spaceflight. Examples of such engines include SuperDraco used in launch escape system of

2457-679: The Mir space station was equipped with an APAS-89 docking port for potential visits to the station by future Buran flights and was later used during the Shuttle-Mir program. The Onboard Manipulator System ( Система Бортовых Манипуляторов ), similar to the Space Shuttle's RMS , was developed at the Central Research and Development Institute for Robotics and Technical Cybernetics to support operations with payload. It could be operated both in manual and automatic modes. The orbiter could carry, depending on

2548-498: The Opel RAK.1 , on liquid-fuel rockets. By May 1929, the engine produced a thrust of 200 kg (440 lb.) "for longer than fifteen minutes and in July 1929, the Opel RAK collaborators were able to attain powered phases of more than thirty minutes for thrusts of 300 kg (660-lb.) at Opel's works in Rüsselsheim," again according to Max Valier's account. The Great Depression brought an end to

2639-572: The Space Shuttle external tank led to the Space Shuttle Columbia 's destruction , as a piece broke loose, damaged its wing and caused it to break up on atmospheric reentry . Liquid methane/LNG has several advantages over LH 2 . Its performance (max. specific impulse ) is lower than that of LH 2 but higher than that of RP1 (kerosene) and solid propellants, and its higher density, similarly to other hydrocarbon fuels, provides higher thrust to volume ratios than LH 2 , although its density

2730-476: The SpaceX Dragon 2 and also engines used for first or second stages in launch vehicles from Astra , Orbex , Relativity Space , Skyrora , or Launcher. Buran (spacecraft) Buran ( Russian : Буран , IPA: [bʊˈran] , lit.   ' blizzard ' ; GRAU index serial number : 11F35 1K , construction number: 1.01 ) was the first spaceplane to be produced as part of

2821-502: The Aggregate Compartment (AO) housed the life support system, the power supply systems and parts of the thermal control system. The cockpit was similar in layout to that of the space shuttle, with three CRT displays. The docking module ( Стыковочный Модуль ) designed for Buran would have been mounted into the forward part of the payload bay. It would be a spherical compartment with a diameter of 2.67 m (8.8 ft), with

Staged combustion cycle - Misplaced Pages Continue

2912-622: The Buran spacecraft began in 1980, and by 1984 the first full-scale orbiter was rolled out. Over 1,000 companies all over the Soviet Union were involved in construction and development. The Buran spacecraft was made to be launched on the Soviet Union's super-heavy lift vehicle, Energia. The Buran program ended in 1993. The Buran orbiter was built around the airframe, which was its main structural component, since all other components were attached to it. The components necessary for flight made up about 20% of

3003-706: The ORM engines, including the engine for the rocket powered interceptor, the Bereznyak-Isayev BI-1 . At RNII Tikhonravov worked on developing oxygen/alcohol liquid-propellant rocket engines. Ultimately liquid propellant rocket engines were given a low priority during the late 1930s at RNII, however the research was productive and very important for later achievements of the Soviet rocket program. Peruvian Pedro Paulet , who had experimented with rockets throughout his life in Peru , wrote

3094-520: The Opel RAK activities. After working for the German military in the early 1930s, Sander was arrested by Gestapo in 1935, when private rocket-engineering became forbidden in Germany. He was convicted of treason to 5 years in prison and forced to sell his company, he died in 1938. Max Valier's (via Arthur Rudolph and Heylandt), who died while experimenting in 1930, and Friedrich Sander's work on liquid-fuel rockets

3185-472: The RS-25 injector design instead went to a lot of effort to vaporize the propellant prior to injection into the combustion chamber. Although many other features were used to ensure that instabilities could not occur, later research showed that these other features were unnecessary, and the gas phase combustion worked reliably. Testing for stability often involves the use of small explosives. These are detonated within

3276-452: The Raptor is the only FFSC engine that has flown on a launch vehicle. Liquid-propellant rocket#Engine cycles Liquid rockets can be monopropellant rockets using a single type of propellant, or bipropellant rockets using two types of propellant. Tripropellant rockets using three types of propellant are rare. Liquid oxidizer propellants are also used in hybrid rockets , with some of

3367-507: The Soviet Molniya rocket , designed by Melnikov, a former assistant to Isaev. About the same time (1959), Nikolai Kuznetsov began work on the closed cycle engine NK-9 for Korolev's orbital ICBM, GR-1 . Kuznetsov later evolved that design into the NK-15 and NK-33 engines for the unsuccessful Lunar N1 rocket . The non-cryogenic N 2 O 4 / UDMH engine RD-253 using staged combustion

3458-577: The Soviet/Russian Buran program . Buran completed one uncrewed spaceflight in 1988, and was destroyed in 2002 due to the collapse of its storage hangar. The Buran-class orbiters used the expendable Energia rocket, a class of super heavy-lift launch vehicle . Besides describing the first operational Soviet/Russian shuttle orbiter, "Buran" was also the designation for the entire Soviet/Russian spaceplane project and its flight articles, which were known as "Buran-class orbiters". The construction of

3549-570: The US for testing. Oxidizer-rich staged combustion had been considered by American engineers, but was not considered a feasible direction because of resources they assumed the design would require to make work. The Russian RD-180 engine also employs a staged-combustion rocket engine cycle. Lockheed Martin began purchasing the RD-180 in circa 2000 for the Atlas III and later, the V , rockets. The purchase contract

3640-614: The advantage of self igniting, reliably and with less chance of hard starts. In the 1940s, the Russians began to start engines with hypergols, to then switch over to the primary propellants after ignition. This was also used on the American F-1 rocket engine on the Apollo program . Ignition with a pyrophoric agent: Triethylaluminium ignites on contact with air and will ignite and/or decompose on contact with water, and with any other oxidizer—it

3731-450: The advantages of a solid rocket . Bipropellant liquid rockets use a liquid fuel such as liquid hydrogen or RP-1 , and a liquid oxidizer such as liquid oxygen . The engine may be a cryogenic rocket engine , where the fuel and oxidizer, such as hydrogen and oxygen, are gases which have been liquefied at very low temperatures. Most designs of liquid rocket engines are throttleable for variable thrust operation. Some allow control of

Staged combustion cycle - Misplaced Pages Continue

3822-399: The approach path. Mock-up nacelles were installed on test articles OK-ML1 and OK-MT and aerodynamic analogue OK-GLI used four such AL-31 engines to perform powered atmospheric flight tests, however a decision was made in late 1987/early 1988 not to use the engines on flight articles. Accordingly, for the first Buran orbital flight the engines were not installed. The automatic landing system

3913-540: The army research station that designed the V-2 rocket weapon for the Nazis. By the late 1930s, use of rocket propulsion for crewed flight began to be seriously experimented with, as Germany's Heinkel He 176 made the first crewed rocket-powered flight using a liquid rocket engine, designed by German aeronautics engineer Hellmuth Walter on June 20, 1939. The only production rocket-powered combat aircraft ever to see military service,

4004-524: The boundary layer between the tiles and the atmosphere, while helping maintain a laminar airflow around the orbiter. The crew module was an all-metal, welded, pressurised compartment housing the crew's workplaces, control, and life support systems. It had three decks. The flight deck, known as the Command Compartment (KO), was the workspace for the crew and served to accommodate the commander, pilot, engineer and mission specialist's seats, as well as

4095-502: The center of the posts and this improves the rate and stability of the combustion process; previous engines such as the F-1 used for the Apollo program had significant issues with oscillations that led to destruction of the engines, but this was not a problem in the RS-25 due to this design detail. Valentin Glushko invented the centripetal injector in the early 1930s, and it has been almost universally used in Russian engines. Rotational motion

4186-459: The central block. The only orbital launch of a Buran-class orbiter, 1K1 (1К1: first orbiter, first flight ) occurred at 03:00:02  UTC on 15 November 1988 from Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad 110/37 . Buran was lifted into space, on an uncrewed mission, by the specially designed Energia rocket. The automated launch sequence performed as specified, and the Energia rocket lifted the vehicle into

4277-443: The chamber during operation, and causes an impulsive excitation. By examining the pressure trace of the chamber to determine how quickly the effects of the disturbance die away, it is possible to estimate the stability and redesign features of the chamber if required. For liquid-propellant rockets, four different ways of powering the injection of the propellant into the chamber are in common use. Fuel and oxidizer must be pumped into

4368-420: The chamber. This gave quite poor efficiency. Injectors today classically consist of a number of small holes which aim jets of fuel and oxidizer so that they collide at a point in space a short distance away from the injector plate. This helps to break the flow up into small droplets that burn more easily. The main types of injectors are The pintle injector permits good mixture control of fuel and oxidizer over

4459-553: The combustion chamber against the pressure of the hot gasses being burned, and engine power is limited by the rate at which propellant can be pumped into the combustion chamber. For atmospheric or launcher use, high pressure, and thus high power, engine cycles are desirable to minimize gravity drag . For orbital use, lower power cycles are usually fine. Selecting an engine cycle is one of the earlier steps to rocket engine design. A number of tradeoffs arise from this selection, some of which include: Injectors are commonly laid out so that

4550-455: The combustion chamber, FFSC engines belong to a broader class of rocket engines called gas-gas engines . Full gasification of components leads to faster chemical reactions in the combustion chamber, allowing a smaller combustion chamber. This in turn makes it feasible to increase the chamber pressure, which increases efficiency. Potential disadvantages of the full-flow staged combustion cycle include more stringent materials requirements, and

4641-416: The combustion chamber, the propellant pressure at the injectors needs to be greater than the chamber pressure. This is often achieved with a pump. Suitable pumps usually use centrifugal turbopumps due to their high power and light weight, although reciprocating pumps have been employed in the past. Turbopumps are usually lightweight and can give excellent performance; with an on-Earth weight well under 1% of

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4732-483: The crew cabin via tunnel, or be temporarily docked to Mir 's Kristall radial docking port. On Buran 's maiden flight, the Accessory Unit ( Блок Дополнительных Приборов ) 37KB No.37070 was installed into the orbiter's payload bay. It carried recording equipment and accumulators providing power to onboard systems as the regular fuel cells based power system were not ready at the time. The second unit, 37KB No.37071

4823-474: The engine as much. This means that engines that burn LNG can be reused more than those that burn RP1 or LH 2 . Unlike engines that burn LH 2 , both RP1 and LNG engines can be designed with a shared shaft with a single turbine and two turbopumps, one each for LOX and LNG/RP1. In space, LNG does not need heaters to keep it liquid, unlike RP1. LNG is less expensive, being readily available in large quantities. It can be stored for more prolonged periods of time, and

4914-628: The engine had "amazing power" and that his plans were necessary for future rocket development. Hermann Oberth would name Paulet as a pioneer in rocketry in 1965. Wernher von Braun would also describe Paulet as "the pioneer of the liquid fuel propulsion motor" and stated that "Paulet helped man reach the Moon ". Paulet was later approached by Nazi Germany , being invited to join the Astronomische Gesellschaft to help develop rocket technology, though he refused to assist after discovering that

5005-467: The entire supply of both propellants passes through the turbines. The fuel turbopump is driven by the fuel-rich preburner, and the oxidizer turbopump is driven by the oxidizer-rich preburner. Benefits of the full-flow staged combustion cycle include turbines that run cooler and at lower pressure, due to increased mass flow, leading to a longer engine life and higher reliability. As an example, up to 25 flights were anticipated for an engine design studied by

5096-462: The expense of increased engine weight. Several variants of the staged combustion cycle exist. Preburners that burn a small portion of oxidizer with a full flow of fuel are called fuel-rich , while preburners that burn a small portion of fuel with a full flow of oxidizer are called oxidizer-rich . The RD-180 has an oxidizer-rich preburner, while the RS-25 has two fuel-rich preburners. The SpaceX Raptor has both oxidizer-rich and fuel-rich preburners,

5187-405: The field to its northern side, before making a right turn back onto the final course. The landing system elected to perform the maneuver as the orbiter's energy didn't decrease enough due to strong-gusty winds in the area, measured at 15 metres per second (29 kn) and gusting up to 20 metres per second (39 kn) at ground level. The dry mass of Buran-class orbiters was quoted 62 tonnes, with

5278-430: The first European, and after Goddard the world's second, liquid-fuel rockets in history. In his book "Raketenfahrt" Valier describes the size of the rockets as of 21 cm in diameter and with a length of 74 cm, weighing 7 kg empty and 16 kg with fuel. The maximum thrust was 45 to 50 kp, with a total burning time of 132 seconds. These properties indicate a gas pressure pumping. The main purpose of these tests

5369-482: The fuel or less commonly the oxidizer to cool the chamber and nozzle. Ignition can be performed in many ways, but perhaps more so with liquid propellants than other rockets a consistent and significant ignitions source is required; a delay of ignition (in some cases as small as a few tens of milliseconds) can cause overpressure of the chamber due to excess propellant. A hard start can even cause an engine to explode. Generally, ignition systems try to apply flames across

5460-550: The gas side boundary layer of the engine, and this can cause the cooling system to rapidly fail, destroying the engine. These kinds of oscillations are much more common on large engines, and plagued the development of the Saturn V , but were finally overcome. Some combustion chambers, such as those of the RS-25 engine, use Helmholtz resonators as damping mechanisms to stop particular resonant frequencies from growing. To prevent these issues

5551-534: The head of GIRD. On 17 August 1933, Mikhail Tikhonravov launched the first Soviet liquid-propelled rocket (the GIRD-9), fueled by liquid oxygen and jellied gasoline. It reached an altitude of 400 metres (1,300 ft). In January 1933 Tsander began development of the GIRD-X rocket. This design burned liquid oxygen and gasoline and was one of the first engines to be regeneratively cooled by the liquid oxygen, which flowed around

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5642-455: The increased engineering complexity and parts count of the two preburners, relative to a single-shaft staged combustion cycle. As of 2024, four full-flow staged combustion rocket engines have been tested on test stands; the Soviet storable propellant RD-270 project at Energomash in the 1960s, the US government-funded hydrolox Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator project at Aerojet Rocketdyne in

5733-479: The injector surface, with a mass flow of approximately 1% of the full mass flow of the chamber. Safety interlocks are sometimes used to ensure the presence of an ignition source before the main valves open; however reliability of the interlocks can in some cases be lower than the ignition system. Thus it depends on whether the system must fail safe, or whether overall mission success is more important. Interlocks are rarely used for upper, uncrewed stages where failure of

5824-443: The inner wall of the combustion chamber before entering it. Problems with burn-through during testing prompted a switch from gasoline to less energetic alcohol. The final missile, 2.2 metres (7.2 ft) long by 140 millimetres (5.5 in) in diameter, had a mass of 30 kilograms (66 lb), and it was anticipated that it could carry a 2 kilograms (4.4 lb) payload to an altitude of 5.5 kilometres (3.4 mi). The GIRD X rocket

5915-451: The interlock would cause loss of mission, but are present on the RS-25 engine, to shut the engines down prior to liftoff of the Space Shuttle. In addition, detection of successful ignition of the igniter is surprisingly difficult, some systems use thin wires that are cut by the flames, pressure sensors have also seen some use. Methods of ignition include pyrotechnic , electrical (spark or hot wire), and chemical. Hypergolic propellants have

6006-410: The launch site , and horizontal landing on a runway. After making an automated approach to Site 251 , Buran touched down under its own control at 06:24:42 UTC and came to a stop at 06:25:24, 206 minutes after launch. Under a crosswind of 61.2 kilometres per hour (38.0 mph), Buran landed 3 metres (9.8 ft) laterally and 10 metres (33 ft) longitudinally from the target mark. It

6097-451: The main combustion chamber. The disadvantage is engineering complexity, partly a result of the preburner exhaust of hot and highly pressurized gas which, particularly when oxidizer-rich, produces extremely harsh conditions for turbines and plumbing. Staged combustion ( Замкнутая схема ) was first proposed by Alexey Isaev in 1949. The first staged combustion engine was the S1.5400 (11D33) used in

6188-581: The mid-2000s, SpaceX's flight capable methalox Raptor engine first test-fired in February 2019, and the methalox engine developed for the first stage of the Stoke Space Nova vehicle in 2024. The first flight test of a full-flow staged-combustion engine occurred on 25 July 2019 when SpaceX flew their Raptor methalox FFSC engine on the Starhopper test rocket , at their South Texas Launch Site . As of 2024,

6279-399: The mission, one or two manipulator arms. The Onboard Manipulator System was not installed for 1K's orbital flight. To expand Buran 's capabilities, pressurized modules similar to ESA's Spacelab were designed based on the 37K design . These modules had to be both compartments to conduct experiments and logistics volume, and could be mounted either in the payload bay and connected to

6370-471: The operator of the Onboard Manipulator System. The middeck or Habitation Compartment (BO), served as the living and sleeping quarters for the crew. It contained lockers, a galley, sleeping bags, and a toilet, in addition to three instrument bays with radio equipment and thermal control systems. Up to six crew members could be seated in the middeck during launch and reentry. The lower deck, known as

6461-549: The outflow of either one or separate preburners. Examples of twin-shaft designs include the Rocketdyne RS-25 , the JAXA LE-7 , and Raptor . Relative to a single-shaft design, the twin-shaft design requires an additional turbine (and possibly another preburner), but allows for individual control of the two turbopumps. Hydrolox engines are typically twin-shaft designs due to greatly differing propellant densities. In addition to

6552-434: The percentage of the theoretical performance of the nozzle that can be achieved. A poor injector performance causes unburnt propellant to leave the engine, giving poor efficiency. Additionally, injectors are also usually key in reducing thermal loads on the nozzle; by increasing the proportion of fuel around the edge of the chamber, this gives much lower temperatures on the walls of the nozzle. Injectors can be as simple as

6643-589: The peroxide to drive turbines before combustion with the kerosene in the combustion chamber proper. This gives the efficiency advantages of staged combustion, while avoiding major engineering problems. The RS-25 Space Shuttle main engine is another example of a staged combustion engine, and the first to use liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Its counterpart in the Soviet shuttle was the RD-0120 , which had similar specific impulse , thrust, and chamber pressure, but with some differences that reduced complexity and cost at

6734-571: The project was destined for weaponization and never shared the formula for his propellant. According to filmmaker and researcher Álvaro Mejía, Frederick I. Ordway III would later attempt to discredit Paulet's discoveries in the context of the Cold War and in an effort to shift the public image of von Braun away from his history with Nazi Germany. The first flight of a liquid-propellant rocket took place on March 16, 1926 at Auburn, Massachusetts , when American professor Dr. Robert H. Goddard launched

6825-702: The propellant mixture ratio (ratio at which oxidizer and fuel are mixed). Some can be shut down and, with a suitable ignition system or self-igniting propellant, restarted. Hybrid rockets apply a liquid or gaseous oxidizer to a solid fuel. The use of liquid propellants has a number of advantages: Use of liquid propellants can also be associated with a number of issues: Liquid rocket engines have tankage and pipes to store and transfer propellant, an injector system and one or more combustion chambers with associated nozzles . Typical liquid propellants have densities roughly similar to water, approximately 0.7 to 1.4 g/cm (0.025 to 0.051 lb/cu in). An exception

6916-504: The propellant turbopumps, staged combustion engines often require smaller boost pumps to prevent both preburner backflow and turbopump cavitation . For example, the RD-180 and RS-25 use boost pumps driven by tap-off and expander cycles , as well as pressurized tanks , to incrementally increase propellant pressure prior to entering the preburner. Full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) is a twin-shaft staged combustion fuel cycle design that uses both oxidizer-rich and fuel-rich preburners where

7007-403: The tankage mass can be acceptable. The major components of a rocket engine are therefore the combustion chamber (thrust chamber), pyrotechnic igniter , propellant feed system, valves, regulators, propellant tanks and the rocket engine nozzle . For feeding propellants to the combustion chamber, liquid-propellant engines are either pressure-fed or pump-fed , with pump-fed engines working in

7098-516: The thrust. Indeed, overall thrust to weight ratios including a turbopump have been as high as 155:1 with the SpaceX Merlin 1D rocket engine and up to 180:1 with the vacuum version. Instead of a pump, some designs use a tank of a high-pressure inert gas such as helium to pressurize the propellants. These rockets often provide lower delta-v because the mass of the pressurant tankage reduces performance. In some designs for high altitude or vacuum use

7189-462: The tiles helped dissipate heat, and, similarly to the tiles used in the Space Shuttle, the Buran tiles were glued to the orbiter. The sides of the heat tiles facing the orbiter were left uncoated to equalize the material pressure with the surroundings, preventing additional mechanical loads. There were deliberate gaps between tiles to allow for thermal expansion. The gaps were filled with quartz fiber , rope, alkaline elements, inserts and brush seals, and

7280-435: The tiles were also waterproofed. The Buran and Space Shuttle orbiters were exposed to similar temperatures, and both had similar levels of insulation. Compared to the Space Shuttle, Buran had a different tile layout on its underside, in which all gaps between heat tiles are parallel or perpendicular to the direction of airflow through the orbiter's lower surface. This layout was designed to reduce heat in between tiles, and in

7371-542: The weight of the orbiter, while another 11% of weight was added by payload systems and removable parts. The wings of the orbiter contained elevators which could be deflected from +35° to −20°. The lower surface of the Buran orbiter was covered in 38,600 carbon-carbon heat shielding tiles designed to withstand 100 reentries. These tiles were very similar to the ones on the US Space Shuttle . The tiles had an antioxidant molybdenum disilicide coating. The black coating in

7462-608: Was achieved. During this period in Moscow , Fredrich Tsander – a scientist and inventor – was designing and building liquid rocket engines which ran on compressed air and gasoline. Tsander investigated high-energy fuels including powdered metals mixed with gasoline. In September 1931 Tsander formed the Moscow based ' Group for the Study of Reactive Motion ', better known by its Russian acronym "GIRD". In May 1932, Sergey Korolev replaced Tsander as

7553-484: Was built in 1987. A third unit 37KB No.37072 was planned, but this never happened because of the cancellation of the program. Orbital maneuvering was provided by the Joint Propulsion System ( Объединенная Двигательная Установка ). The initial design of the orbiter included two Saturn AL-31 jet engines in special nacelles either side of the tailfin, which could be used in the final phase of reentry to modify

7644-451: Was capable of performing a fully automatic descent, approach and landing from any point located in the "admissible starting conditions area" at 100 kilometres (62 mi) altitude, controlling the orbiter's flight during the descent. The descent profile covered 8,000 kilometres (4,300 nmi) through the atmosphere during the approach and eventually slowed down from 28,000 kilometres per hour (15,000 kn) to zero. The first Buran flight

7735-542: Was confiscated by the German military, the Heereswaffenamt and integrated into the activities under General Walter Dornberger in the early and mid-1930s in a field near Berlin. Max Valier was a co-founder of an amateur research group, the VfR , working on liquid rockets in the early 1930s, and many of whose members eventually became important rocket technology pioneers, including Wernher von Braun . Von Braun served as head of

7826-552: Was developed by Valentin Glushko circa 1963 for the Proton rocket . After the abandonment of the N1, Kuznetsov was ordered to destroy the NK-33 technology, but instead he warehoused dozens of the engines. In the 1990s, Aerojet was contacted and eventually visited Kuznetsov's plant. Upon meeting initial skepticism about the high specific impulse and other specifications, Kuznetsov shipped an engine to

7917-542: Was launched on 25 November 1933 and flew to a height of 80 meters. In 1933 GDL and GIRD merged and became the Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII). At RNII Gushko continued the development of liquid propellant rocket engines ОРМ-53 to ОРМ-102, with ORM-65  [ ru ] powering the RP-318 rocket-powered aircraft . In 1938 Leonid Dushkin replaced Glushko and continued development of

8008-413: Was notable for the automatic landing system electing to perform an unlikely (estimated 3% probability) maneuver at the 20 kilometres (66,000 ft) key point, which was needed to extend the glide distance and bleed excessive energy. The standard approach was from the south and consisted of two left turns onto the final approach course. Instead, it performed additional turns in both directions and overflew

8099-569: Was subsequently taken over by United Launch Alliance (ULA--the Boeing/Lockheed-Martin joint venture) after 2006, and ULA continues to fly the Atlas V with RD-180 engines as of 2022. The first laboratory staged-combustion test engine in the West was built in Germany in 1963, by Ludwig Boelkow . Hydrogen peroxide / kerosene powered engines may use a closed-cycle process by catalytically decomposing

8190-399: Was the first spaceplane to perform an uncrewed flight, including landing in fully automatic mode. It was later found that Buran had lost eight of its 38,000 thermal tiles over the course of its flight. In 1989, it was projected that Buran would have an uncrewed second flight by 1993, with a duration of 15–20 days. However, the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to funding drying up and

8281-577: Was to develop the liquid rocket-propulsion system for a Gebrüder-Müller-Griessheim aircraft under construction for a planned flight across the English channel. Also spaceflight historian Frank H. Winter , curator at National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, confirms the Opel group was working, in addition to their solid-fuel rockets used for land-speed records and the world's first crewed rocket-plane flights with

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