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On 2/28/2019 at 5:01 AM, MaverickSawyer said:

Huh. LOX-cooled engine? That's... kind of an odd choice. Wonder why?

For bigger explosions! >_<

(looks like a great project!)

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  • 4 months later...
9 hours ago, tater said:

 

365 seconds!?!?!

Holy beejeezus donkey balls! That is almost incomprehensibly high. What kind of chamber pressures must they have?!

Unless I miss my guess, that's considerably higher than even the mighty NK-43, a once-planned vacuum-optimized ORSC Russian engine. 365 seconds approaches the theoretical maximum of kerolox chemical potential.

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They claim 98% efficiency and an exhaust imparted with so much energy it burns blue.

But the only available stats are from their own promotional materials and it hasn't had a full-scale test - yet.

365s is 6s better than the best available vacuum engine right now. I can *just* believe that there's 6s to be had out of a monolithic 3D printed combustion chamber, but wow even so.

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1 hour ago, sh1pman said:

10 tons of thrust, same as RL-10 (almost). Decent ISP. 3D printed, so likely cheap to manufacture. I like it.

For a kerolox engine? This has a "decent" ISP in the same way that the Merlin 1D has a "decent" TWR and the Saturn V had a "decent" lift capacity. 365 seconds is insane.

For reference: The Rutherford, which is electric-pump-fed and thus burns 100% of its propellant in the chamber, has a vacuum ISP of only 343 seconds.

1 hour ago, RCgothic said:

They claim 98% efficiency and an exhaust imparted with so much energy it burns blue.

But the only available stats are from their own promotional materials and it hasn't had a full-scale test - yet.

365s is 6s better than the best available vacuum engine right now. I can *just* believe that there's 6s to be had out of a monolithic 3D printed combustion chamber, but wow even so.

I am cautiously optimistic.

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  • 8 months later...
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Sort of related, I found a paper written by this company's current chief designer (Igor N. Nikischenko, who formerly worked as the Deputy Chief Designer in the Liquid Propulsion Department at Yuzhnoye in Ukraine) a few years back. It talks about the rationale for using LOX as a regenerative coolant and also discusses some novel combustion cycles. It looks as though the RD-58MF also uses LOX as a regenerative coolant if what this paper says is true.

Quote

Due to its properties, LOX is more suitable for regenerative cooling than kerosene. Additionally, LOX flow rates are normally several times higher than kerosene flow rates (according to MR showed in Table 1 it is at least in 2.4 times higher). It is tacitly believed that oxidizers at all and LOX specifically are not suitable for thrust chamber cooling. This belief is based on the principal concern that metal alloys are vulnerable to heavy oxidation and ignition in oxidizing environments. However, LOX regenerative cooling of thrust chamber was successfully confirmed in the 1950-60s. [...] The high effectiveness of LOX cooling was experimentally proved, as well as its feasibility. In the course of RKK Energia investigations the small leakages in the thrust chamber inner wall were simulated during the firing tests and it was proved that such defects do not cause thrust chamber destruction. [...] Intensive investigations of LOX cooling were also conducted by NASA. In particular, successful firing tests were conducted using experimental thrust chambers. Similar to RKK Energia, NASA experimentally confirmed that small leakages in thrust chamber inner wall did not cause destruction of the thrust chamber.

It is intended that LOX regenerative cooling of 11D58MF thrust chamber will exclude the internal [film] cooling, thus avoiding the associated specific impulse losses.

In hindsight, the big advantages to using LOX over RP-1 for cooling are clear: LOX mass flow rate is much higher than RP-1 mass flow rate and you also get the benefit of latent heat release from LOX (whereas RP-1 must be kept cool enough to prevent formation of waxes in the cooling channels).

The whole paper is fascinating and really worth a read. (Maybe semi-expander semi-gas-generator cycles will be the trendy new thing for upper stage engines, eh?)

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  • 1 month later...
3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I see an odd, green flash at startup - but nothing burning blue. 

What is the Neanderthal missing? 

Judging by their tweet tater posted earlier in the thread, isn't the entire thing copper? That could explain the green flame.

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3 hours ago, GuessingEveryDay said:

TEA-TEB, a common engine igniter. The Falcon 9 does this too.

 

4 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Judging by their tweet tater posted earlier in the thread, isn't the entire thing copper? That could explain the green flame.

I'm going to go with Guessing's idea, since the green jet happens on ignition.  Were it copper burning, I'd think that would come later.  Mind you, I'm the resident knuckle dragger going off of freshman Chem and Astronomy 101 that covered blackbody emissions 30 some odd years ago and some light reading since.

But earlier they claimed the engine was so efficient / hot it burned blue.  That I did not see

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1 minute ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I thought Raptor was spark ignition?

Which would still leave the question of what (or which piece of copper) was burning green? Part of the spark ignition, or not quite norminal? 

That is not a Raptor, this is Launcher, a different company, not SpaceX.

https://launcherspace.com/

 

D0GLHtUXQAEpyNG?format=jpg

 

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