So this came out a few days back, h/t Nyrath. It has at least two titles: "This rocket engine could save fuel on the long trip to Mars" and "Watch NASA test potentially revolutionary 3D-printed rocket engine (video)". The URL matches the latter.
The article concerns not one but three means to beat the Isp / Thrust tradeoff; the 3D-printed thingy is just one. Another is NTP. Although I agree that the 3D-printed engine is... interesting.
Although-although I do not know how well it will scale. It concerns the detonation of a volatile as against a steady burn; the thrust and Isp being mingled on account multiple detonations happen in sequence. This blog has dealt with the concept before; what I see new is the 3D-printing. Maybe they have accepted that the detonations will harm the chassis so are going for the cheapest manufacturing possible. UPDATE 6/13: A motive here is to make each thruster as identical to the others as inhumanly possible. I'd say it was a "clear" motive excepting that I'd only figured this out five months later . . .
High-thrust, to put mid-mass cargo into and out of Hohmann, on the cheap. Said cargo is already delivered to a midrange Earth orbit, by some booster or other. Seems like getting said cargo up there would be a fine job for the SpaceX SuperHeavy.
No comments:
Post a Comment