500 lbf LOX/IPA Engine Test (43 second burn)

A liquid oxygen and isopropyl alcohol rocket engine that produces 480 lbf thrust over a 43 second burn time.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• rocket
• engine

[mmealling]

44R0Ndin is right. It did have some combustion instabilities that we fixed immediately after that. We used off the shelf audio analysis to determine the frequency and then looked at what systems were seeing something similar and corrected it.

dawson01912, this is a test engine for a flight demonstrator. We are already scaling it up. Plus there are four such engines on any given vehicle so multiply that thrust by four.

[mmealling]

iv81, hydrogen is way to problematic due to temperatures, flammability, storage, and price. We're getting all the performance we need without any of those headaches.

[mmealling]

sortalong, that engine ended up with at least a 3:1 throttle ratio. This burn is that same engine with a new injector at 35% throttle: http://youtube.com/watch?v=aKM­9Qo0u4WI

[Jimmywylde]

That's incredible, i'm curious, did you make that?

[mmealling]

Did I personally? No. The company that I do marketing and business development for made it. Its part of our vehicle development program. See http://masten-space.com/

[mrfrankincense]

how much does the rocket plus fuel/lox weigh?

[mnovratil]

NICE LONG BURN

[abond1007i]

well I can say that I know the government doesn't like people launching rockets, but what if you put wings on your car?

[EGCblackknight]

whats the fuel consumption on that fabulouspiece of backyard engineering, in lbs/hour

[rcfreak2493]

u could have gone to the moon with that thing... and back

[TheClaw70]

i was getting the immpression the throat was starting to burn out of it, hence the changing pitch.

[44R0Ndin]

btw, i said it was a problem because if it was used on a rocket the singing is a combustion instability that is most often a result of the injectors being misplaced slightly. this can cause pogoing which could damage the engine mounts or payload. it happened on the Atlas rocket used in the mercury/gemini programs, even though it wouldn't damage a nuclear warhead, it would cause many problems in the mercury/gemini capsule because of its much more sensitive instruments and the human on-board

[44R0Ndin]

yep, Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) are liquid hydrogen (LH2) + Liquid Oxygen (LO2) fueled, but the in the past they have used kerosene and LO2 (apollo saturn V 1st/2nd stage engines) and the new moon shot will use methane (CH4) and LO2 in the cargo launch vehicle along with the 5 segment version of the space shuttle srb's (4 segment is in current use on the space shuttle)