Are Amateur Orbital Rockets Possible? This is one of my space related projects.
The status of this document is work in progress. Please note that this document was originally written in 1995 with only minor updates moving forward. As such, it is getting pretty dated. Table of Contents Disclaimer Even the best designed rockets sometimes explode, and when they do, the high speed metal fragments that are ejected from the explosion can be thought of as shrapnel that can cause grievous harm if any pieces hit anyone. Introduction This document is basically a bunch of notes to myself about the issues involved in designing a fairly big amateur rocket that is capable inserting a small payload into low earth orbit. I am very impressed with what the amateur rocket community has been able to build and launch to date. The amateur rocket community has been attracted to solid propellant rockets due to their innate simplicity and relative low cost. Fuel/Oxidizer Selection The list of reasonable fume toxicity oxidizers is quite short: Tanks xxxx.
Liquid Rocket Motor Fundementals. Liquid Rocket Motor Design This page outlines the simple design requirements and equations for a simple rocket motor, including points to ponder along the way. This section is not a comprehensive outline of rocket motor design, as such an outline becomes extremely complicated when pursuing optimum efficiency. For detailed information, refer to specialized books on the subject such as Rocket Propulsion Elements (G. Sutton) and the AIAA publication Modern Engineering for Design of Liquid-Propellant Rocket Engines (K Huzel and H. Huang). Motor design begins with questions designed to identify as many of design parameters and limitations as possible. . · What is the purpose of the rocket motor?
· How much thrust does it need to produce? · What is the design envelope (how big can it be)? · Are there financial limitations? · Are there environmental concerns (both for the rocket vehicle and occupants and the location of operation)? Rocket Motor Design Issues The Math: Propellant Mass Flowrate. Kerosene Properties. LIQUID-FUEL ROCKET ENGINES.
HOW to DESIGN, BUILD and TEST SMALL LIQUID-FUEL ROCKET ENGINES Reprinted with permission. ROCKETLAB cannot assume responsibility, in any manner whatsoever, for the use readers make of the information presented herein or the device resulting therefrom. MIT, LCS, and the volunteers who have made this information available on the W3 likewise disclaim all responibility for whatever use readers make of this information. This document is provided on a strictly informational basis. You can now download this entire book as a tarball (rocket.tar.gz) or as a zipfile (rocket.zip). Copyright 1967 by Leroy J. Properties of Gases. Properties of LOX. Multi-Industry Uses for Oxygen: Oxygen is used with fuel gases in gas welding, gas cutting, oxygen scarfing, flame cleaning, flame hardening, and flame straightening.
In gas cutting, the oxygen must be of high quality to ensure a high cutting speed and a clean cut. Metals Manufacturing Uses for Oxygen: The largest user of oxygen is the steel industry. Modern steelmaking relies heavily on the use of oxygen to enrich air and increase combustion temperatures in blast furnaces and open hearth furnaces as well as to replace coke with other combustible materials. Oxygen enrichment of combustion air, or oxygen injection through lances, is used to an increasing extent in cupola furnaces, open-hearth furnaces, smelters for glass and mineral wool, and lime and cement kilns, to enhance their capacity and reduce energy requirements. Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals and Petroleum Uses: Oxygen is used to enrich the air feed to catalytic cracking regenerators, which increases capacity of the units. Cpropep-Web. Cpropep-Web complexe chemical equilibrium and rocket performance calcultaions Cpropep-Web is a cgi interface to Cpropep.
This software is also available as a command line program. Cpropep is a propellant evaluation software that will let you compute rocket motor performance in function of the propellant. It works like the known software `propep' but is code in standard C, is in development and is supported. Cpropep can compute chemical equilibrium for a fixed temperature and pressure points, adiabatic flame temperature, frozen and shifting equilibrium rocket performance evaluation. To compute an equilibrium, you just have to specify up to tree ingredient.