Questions tagged [booster]
A booster is a type of rocket used to assist in putting larger payloads into orbit. Use with the [rocket] tag any any other relevant launch vehicle tags
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Did Relativity's Terran 1 booster survive the fall to the ocean for recovery?
There is no plan to recover the booster of the Terran 1 rocket launched yesterday. Did the booster survive (not necessarily intact) the fall to the ocean and the impact with the surface of the water? ...
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Would it make sense to compress air around a bell nozzle during booster ascent?
Regarding boosters having one single liquid fuel engine, such as Delta 4 for example.
Would some sort of annular aerodynamic device, attached to the skirt and placed around the bell nozzle, help ...
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Does a RTLS (Return To Launch Site) landing deposit more soot on the booster than a drone ship landing?
First, it performs an extra burn (the boostback burn). Does this burn make a credible source of extra soot? Second, sometimes it appears to have flown through the second stage's exhaust plume. Does ...
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SLS Block 2: Original thrust
In older graphics depicting the evolution of the SLS vehicle, it states that the Block 2 upgrade was to produce 11.9 million lbs of thrust. At some point in the last few years, however, this has ...
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Has there ever been a fully-reusable big-dumb-booster design proposed?
I know of fully expendable Big Dumb Boosters, as well as "smart" reuse in systems like NEXUS (all versions) and their contemporaries, what I'm trying to figure out (after hours of sorting ...
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Thrust to weight of large solid fuel boosters
I have been looking at examples of large solid fuel rocket boosters or first stages used for space launch, such as P80, the Space Shuttle SRB, the various versions of Graphite-Epoxy-Motor, the solid ...
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Why do the walls of a solid rocket booster not glow red hot?
After ignition the walls of the SRB are separated from the "reaction chamber" by solid rocket fuel. But as the burn progresses, more and more fuel is used up and so the isolation from the ...
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What is the difference between the solid fuel Boosters of the Shuttle and Artemis?
The Shuttle boosters had 4 segments and Artemis has 5. What are the differences in total mass, thrust and burn time? Is the thrust profile (thrust over time) the same?
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Atlas V booster appearance change in flight
In the livestream of the latest Atlas V 541 flight launching the GOES-T satelite I saw that the nosecones of the two visible boosters changed the appearance within a few seconds in the flight.
Is this ...
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What are the advantages of air lit solid boosters in PSLV XL?
ISRO's PSLV-XL has 6 solid strap on boosters.
In a typical flight profile 4 strap on boosters are lit on ground just before liftoff.
The remaining two boosters are lift 25 seconds later in air.
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What limits pressure buildup in SRB's?
According to st. Robert's Law, propellant burn rates increase with pressure.
When an SRB is ignited, propellant starts to burn, making the pressure rise in the combustion chamber.
The flow through the ...
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Which burning of Solid Propellant is best axial burning or radial Burning?
Which Burning is Better Axial or Radial of Solid Propellant grain used in Solid Rocket Motors?
How Someone Determines which to choose according to the Mission requirements ?
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What would it take to bring VSS Unity over the Kármán line?
There's been a great deal debate about Virgin Galactic calling 50 miles "space", while most use a 100 km Kármán line definition for the term. VSS Unity has exceeded 89 km altitude on two ...
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Why are Starship landings so difficult when SpaceX has landed so many boosters?
Per Wikipedia, SpaceX has landed boosters successfully 79 out of 90 times.
Yet Starships seem to be reliably exploding upon landing.
What is so different about the two that Starships are so much more ...
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Why are strap-on boosters more often attached radially in Eastern-European/Asian rockets, and bilaterally in Western-European/American rockets?
While comparing launch vehicles with strap on boosters, it appears to me that the majority of Eastern-European/Asian vehicles arrange the boosters radially, but the Western-European/American vehicles ...
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What is super heavy booster? What will it be used for?
Also called BN1, right?
Please explain me what is booster and what will it be used for?
Also feel free to give me additional insights other than included in my question about BN1.
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What's the benefit of making boosters land nicely (SpaceX) instead of parachuting them at sea (Space Shuttle) [duplicate]
SpaceX boosters return by landing nicely thanks to an elaborate guiding system. This requires, well, a guiding system (so, more electronics, more opportunities for failure and massive engineering ...
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New Shepard payload capacity to orbit?
If the current Blue Origin New Shepard were modified as little as possible to work as the first stage of a two-stage rocket, what would be its maximal LEO payload?
To put it in other words: out of all ...
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Why does the Indian PSLV rocket have tiny boosters?
I have noticed that the Indian rocket PSLV has tiny strap-on boosters attached to it on the sides at the bottom. Why would these be used instead of just using a larger first stage? Why is there an ...
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Liquid Nitrogen Diluted Rocket
Imagine a rocket that uses a mixture of liquid nitrogen and oxygen as the oxidiser.
It is designed like an oxidiser-rich staged-combustion engine, however there is so much nitrogen in the mixture that ...
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Rocket staging by use of strap on Boosters
Will it be advantageous to have multiple (say-3) stages of a rocket, arranged in a "strap-on" type SRBs' assembly, geometrically well distributed around the circumference w.r.t. their ...
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Could the Dream Chaser or Space Shuttle fly/have flown to the Moon with boosters on the orbiter's side?
In the 1998 movie Armageddon the crews use Space Shuttles which have boosters also on the orbiters' sides (two boosters per orbiter) in order to get to the Moon and to the asteroid. Upon descent onto ...
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How does re-usable boosters by SpaceX return back and land on the deck 'Of Course I still Love You'? [duplicate]
The idea was to bring back the rockets/boosters safely and re-use them for next time. How SpaceX was able to achieve this?
Intuitively there have to be multiple sensors recording and computer ...
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Are core stages going to start falling unpredictably from orbit somewhat regularly now?
Spaceflight Now's U.S. military tracking unguided re-entry of large Chinese rocket includes the following:
In the case of the Long March 5B, the core stage delivered its payload — a prototype ...
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How is solid rocket fuel sourced?
I know that Orbital ATK builds solid rocket boosters, but where do they get the bulk material from? Is there a single supplier or multiple suppliers of solid rocket fuel or do motor manufacturers ...
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Have there been any rockets that run seven engines at the same time?
Answers to Rockets with n-engines, for n = 1, 2, 3… cover all single digit nontrivial† values except for seven, so...
Question: Have there been any rockets that run seven engines at the same time?
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What is the limit to which we can scale up uniformly in all directions Space Shuttle SRB before it becomes unable to take off?
Let's say we like the Space Shuttle design so much, we want to use it as a reference for our new rocket. But we want to build rocket which will be capable of launching larger payload into Earth's ...
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Comparing Long March 5's CZ-5-300 RP-1/LOX booster to Falcon 9 first stage; similar Isp's but very different relative volumes
Wikipedia's CZ-5-300 and Falcon 9 Full Thrust provide the following rough figures.
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Why exactly didn't they jettinson the boosters direct after burnout at the Starliner launch?
Today's Starliner launch kept the boosters attached for an additional 48 seconds after they burned out. Keeping the dead weight and additional drag is pretty obviously suboptimal.
During the live ...
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How heavy can a fuel tank get before making it heavier is a liability under any circumstances?
This Question may bend the boundaries of this community a little, since it's mostly about hypothetical rockets that would never be built.
Considering a filled fuel tank has to withstand a lot of ...
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What refractory material is used to line booster rockets?
I assume the shell/structure of a solid rocket booster requires protection from the ~3000°C+ combustion temperature of its fuel.
What does/did NASA, Roscosmos, SpaceX, Ariane 5, etc use to line their ...
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Features seen on the Space Shuttle's solid booster; what does "LOADED" mean exactly?
The question Please explain the time reference shown in Shuttle launch engineering video links to the very cool video Ascent - Commemorating Shuttle. After about ...
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Why did Orbex choose propane as its fuel?
As a follow up to Are there liquid fueled rocket boosters having coaxial fuel/oxidizer tanks? and thinking about JCRM's answer pointing the issue of having a huge contact surface between inner and ...
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Are there liquid fueled rocket boosters having coaxial fuel/oxidizer tanks?
Reading this question, instead of stacking two tanks, are there boosters where tanks are coaxial, (like a thermos bottle) having a trussed or tridimensional structure between inner and outer tank?
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Why "strap-on" boosters, and how do other people say it?
This came up for me in the context of translating something into German. Everybody throws around terms like "strap-on boosters", although they aren't actually held on by straps. It's not even meant ...
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Why did the nozzles on the SRB's igniter initiator point toward the grain of the main igniter while the main igniter's nozzle pointed straight down?
How did the shuttle designers make those decisions? What made it a better decision to point the exhaust of the igniter initiator toward the main igniter's grain at an angle? What made it a better ...
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SpaxeX employees on the droneship when the booster lands?
SpaceX is doing a great job in recovering the boosters from its rockets.
The Falcon Heavy has 3 boosters. 2 of which land at Cape Canaveral and 1 on a drone ship somewhere in the ocean.
Are there ...
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When was the first strap-on booster used in spaceflight?
The first use of the term "strap-on" in Google Ngram viewer is in 1930 and presumably that wasn't about a booster being attached to a rocket for additional thrust at lift-off.
When was a ...
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When does reusable lower rocket stages become benificial?
Can lower stages of current rockets be replaced to reusable and more efficient boosters with parachutes? Would reusable rocket stages save money?
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Can a first stage be a booster?
Wikipedia defines booster as"A booster rocket (or engine) is either the first stage of a multistage launch vehicle, or else a shorter-burning rocket used in parallel with longer-burning sustainer ...
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How is thrust transmitted from strap on boosters to the central core?
Strap on boosters of a lot of heavy launch vehicles seems to be attached with just a few "flimsy" struts.
Here are few images for reference :
Some of the possibilities:
These support structures ...
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What is the sensor used for Soyuz booster separation?
Roscosmos released their findings of the aborted Soyuz-to-ISS launch, blaming it on a separation sensor that had a deformed pin.
What is this sensor? It sounds like an electrical plunger switch, but ...
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SRB ejection methods [duplicate]
While an empty GEM-60 is just under 2 tons, it occurred to me that additional thrust could be generated by jettisoning the empty boosters (or a large portion of them) BEHIND the Delta IV rather than ...
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Are side boosters sometimes angled even if they are symmetrically arranged?
When more than one side booster is added to a first stage to increase thrust and they are distributed uniformly around the core (as opposed to those shown in links below) thrust does not seem to need ...
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Why aren't airbreathing SRBs a thing?
To the best of my knowledge, all solid rocket boosters so far use a propellant that is a solid mixture of both the fuel and the oxidiser parts of the reaction. However, given that SRBs are generally ...
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SpaceX May 11, 2018 Falcon 9 launch had no boostback burn
One of my questions regarding the May 11 launch is Why no boostback burn? I assume that without such a burn, Stage One would continue on at about 8,000 km/hr in an EASTWARD direction, away from the ...
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Are any "strap-on" boosters held in place by actual straps?
Have there been any strap-on boosters that are attached to the main body of a rocket with actual straps (like bands of metal or something similar), as the name implies? If not, what's the origin of ...
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Why GSLV is so strange rocket? [duplicate]
GSLV looks strange:
1. It has liquid fuel boosters and solid fuel core, while all other launchers with boosters have solid fuel boosters
2. Its boosters finish to work after core, so actually they are ...
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Is there a point where boosters don't make sense, or are boosters always desirable to increase payload?
Consider a rocket using nuclear fuel, where the energy density is far higher. Let's stipulate that in an SSTO configuration, it's got a payload capacity like the Falcon Heavy. So, at that point, you ...
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What is used to connect the side boosters to the first stage?
For example, on the Falcon Heavy, the two side cores detached from the first stage but how are they attached and what mechanism is used to detach them?
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