Questions tagged [solid-fuel]
Questions about solid fuels. The rockets that use them, the fuels that are burned, and the vendors that make them.
54
questions
5
votes
1answer
142 views
Are more details about the fatal rocket motor accident at Cape Canaveral in April 1964 available?
The 1966 book The Life and Death of a Satellite by Alfred Bester contains an account of a accidental ignition of a third-stage solid rocket motor in a Delta rocket spin test facility at the Cape which ...
2
votes
0answers
59 views
What are the advantages of solid iodine propellant and how is it used for ion propulsion?
I was reading about different sources of propellant for ion thrusters, Xenon being the most common. However, in more recent articles I've found more and more mentions of Solid Iodine being used as ion ...
0
votes
2answers
178 views
Are solid-fueled launch vehicles faster to orbit than liquid-fueled ones?
The (relatively) new Kuaizhou family of launch vehicles is described as "quick-reaction", and is based on ASAT and ICBM heritage.
Solid-fueled rockets have been, historically, cheaper to launch on, ...
1
vote
1answer
240 views
Does this Soyuz vehicle burn coal or oil? What is its official name?
This tweet shows the image below and says:
Soyuz rocket on its way to the launch pad (on a train of course).
Question: Does this Soyuz vehicle (a train engine) burn coal or oil? Does it have an ...
3
votes
1answer
121 views
Was there a history of segmented solid rockets prior to the Shuttle?
The Shuttle famously (perhaps infamously) had its solid rocket boosters built in segments, which were transported to KSC and then joined together. The SLS will similarly have segmented SRBs.
Were ...
5
votes
1answer
197 views
What is the requirement of spacer rings in solid rocket motors in sounding rockets?
I saw this report SOLID ROCKET MOTOR DESIGN L-CLASS, here as shown in FIGURE-8, they have charged the motor with grain segments with spacer rings in between. Can`t we charge the motor without any ...
3
votes
0answers
108 views
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 ...
7
votes
3answers
846 views
Why doesn't Rocket Lab use a solid stage?
I was just reading about the Scout, an all-solid rocket, and thought of Rocket Lab's Electron, which seems to have a similar mission of deploying small payloads to orbit. I understand the engines to ...
6
votes
1answer
224 views
Which rockets use(d) solid-fuel upper stages?
The Antares is unusual in that it's using solid-fuel in the second stage. I was surprised about that and a couple of questions immediately popped up which are already covered on this site: How can a ...
6
votes
0answers
174 views
How do HMX-fuelled rockets launch without exploding?
Unlike most civilian solid-fuel rockets, which use ammonium perchlorate/aluminium fuels with a rubber binder (known in the industry as ammonium perchlorate composite propellant, or APCP for short), ...
2
votes
2answers
177 views
Solid hydrogen hybrid motor engine for launch?
Would hydrogen unlike water in a solid state take less space or be more stable? How would a rocket work using a block of melting solid hydrogen instead of liquid hydrogen? Has and could any kind of ...
3
votes
1answer
138 views
How do you avoid wasting oxidizer when designing a hybrid rocket?
I was thinking of designing a very simple and small Paraffin rocket engine as an experiment. One thing that I don't understand about these designs is how you efficiently use your oxidizer without a ...
4
votes
0answers
84 views
How much would mass-production impact the cost of solid-fuel rockets?
Let's imagine that, for some arbitrary reason, solid-fuel rocket stages were needed and built en masse in factories, like planes or even like cars.
How much would it drive down the cost of an ...
10
votes
1answer
288 views
Why were large solid-fuel rockets so rare in the past?
When the Germans projected the A4 missile, they discarded solid-fuel propulsion and went on to circumvent the enormous technical difficulties of building a liquid-fuel engine from scratch. Germany had,...
4
votes
2answers
821 views
Have there been any spacecraft with internal SRM other than CONTOUR?
I read about the CONTOUR mission which used an internal solid rocket motor to change the trajectory. Have there been other spacecraft using a solid rocket motor which is not jettisoned after usage?
8
votes
2answers
378 views
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 ...
14
votes
1answer
337 views
How far have autophage rockets been developed?
Ars Technica reports on a May 24 phys.org press release/precis on a University of Glasgow paper in Journal of Spacecraft of Rockets about a solid rocket intended to consume itself during use rather ...
14
votes
4answers
3k views
Do launchers using only solid propellant exist?
The question is restricted to launchers that have already been used to launch an object into orbit before today (April 2018).
Some military ballistic missiles run only on solid propergol (e.g. the ...
2
votes
0answers
104 views
Which solid fuel is optimal for light rocket?
I am in search of comparatively cheap and powerful enough solid fuel. I've found rocket candy, but is it enough to reach 1km altitude?
(My aim is a 2 metre high rocket with 0.5kg of payload.)
6
votes
1answer
779 views
Why did Virgin Galactic switch back to HTPB after one launch using thermoplastic polyamide (i.e. nylon)?
A subsection of Second-generation engine in Wikipedia's article on RocketMotorTwo says:
New fuel formulation
Rather than use rubber-based HTPB in the solid portion of the hybrid rocket motor—...
18
votes
2answers
5k views
Do the solid rocket boosters of the Shuttle and SLS have a self-destruct system and was it activated during the Challenger disaster?
Videos of the Challenger shuttle explosion show both solid boosters speeding on after the main tank detonated. Were they eventually self-destructed by the ground control, or why not, and why not ...
17
votes
1answer
4k views
How were the Space Shuttle SRBs ignited? (with what?)
I'm unable to find how exactly the Space Shuttle's SRBs were ignited, or what exactly was used to ignite the rocket.
I'm trying to figure out the best way to instantly ignite a solid rocket reliably,...
13
votes
1answer
2k views
How does a solid propellant in a rocket work?
I'm a bit confused about how the fuel manages to get from wherever its being stored in a spacecraft into the engines, seeing as it is supposedly solid and so seems like it wouldn't be easy to move. ...
7
votes
1answer
253 views
Why was the Minotaur V built as a 5-stage design?
Why is Orbital Science's Minotaur V rocket a five stage design? I am aware this is derived from an ICBM design, but why would anyone want a five stage design for launching non-lethal payloads? It ...
1
vote
0answers
655 views
Could Sodium metal be used in rocket fuel?
For instance, I read that the Hercules X-265 rocket motor used in the Sprint missile was a solid double base propellant that used nitrocellulose with zirconium metal staples and nitroglycerin as a ...
11
votes
1answer
2k views
What solid fuel was used in the Katyushas rocket artillery of WW2?
The Katyushas were invented by the Soviets and used in WW2. They were trucks with rails firing a bunch of small rockets with a range of 3 to 12 km.
These were solid-fuel rockets, but I would like to ...
7
votes
2answers
924 views
Why isn't someone building a fully reusable solid fuel rocket?
Solid rocket motors are so much simpler than liquid fueled. Why isn't e.g. SpaceX making a Falcon 9 equivalent with solid fuel only, and rescuing the segment cases with parachutes like the shuttle ...
2
votes
1answer
659 views
Comparison between solid rocket fuels. Which are better by performance and cost? [closed]
I am interested for a comparison of solid rocket fuels by their performance and cost. Comparison by specific impulse (Isp), energy that gives (which one is more energitic), density, cost to ...
13
votes
3answers
766 views
Why are there so few solid rocket satellite launchers?
At first glance, solid rocket launching makes more sense than liquid:
Simple to scale. Once designed, it can be made perfectly the same, all the time.
Storage - Keep for as long as you want, launch ...
7
votes
2answers
2k views
What is the correct thrust curve for a solid rocket with a simple circular hole, and why?
Going to wikipedia's article on solid-fuel rockets, I come across some graphs of thrust curves for certain bore-hole geometry. Right now I'm interested in the simplest bore-hole: a circular hole right ...
9
votes
1answer
726 views
What ever happened to SpinSat - did it work?
I can find several descriptions of what the SpinSat satellite was supposed to do. I can find some nice images of it being deployed from the ISS also. But I haven't been so successful in understanding ...
9
votes
1answer
2k views
How does an Electric Solid Propellant rocket work?
I saw the section in Wikipedia about Electric Solid propellants but I can't figure out what it really is, and how it works. It sounds like a solid propellant rocket that you can start and stop ...
10
votes
5answers
1k views
What limits burning speed of solid propellant?
SRBs and missiles use grain to regulate thrust over time, as only exposed surface of the propellant burns.
But what causes propellant to burn only on the surface, and regulates the speed at which the ...
7
votes
3answers
377 views
Burn 1st stage structural material as fuel?
Aluminum/Magnesium alloys can burn quite nicely. The stoichiometry is favoriable. Instead of $CO_2$ which is mostly oxidizer by mass, you might end up with $Al_2O_3$ and $MgO$ as exhaust.
The ...
4
votes
1answer
484 views
What does “supersonic large amplitude ID maneuver PTI” mean, and what does a tumble motor do?
In this question I linked to a YouTube video of the Ares X-1 launch. You can start listening at 02:00 for the point where these are mentioned:
"Supersonic large ...
6
votes
2answers
1k views
Is it unusual to vector the thrust from an SRB?
Let me explain. The term SRB (Solid (fuel) Rocket Booster) usually refers to a solid (fuel) rocket which is attached to something else in order to "boost" it.
But I just read this answer by @...
10
votes
2answers
488 views
What kind of missions are US surplus ICBM's capable of launching?
It has been proposed that the US military should repurpose suborbital, nuclear weapons carrying, intercontinental ballistic missiles for civil use, like Russia and Ukraine has done since decades. How ...
17
votes
2answers
2k views
Why did the Vanguard rocket use a solid engine for its third stage?
The Vanguard rocket had three stages. The first two were liquid-fueled and the third was solid-fueled.
That struck me as odd, as solid fuel engines are almost exclusively used in atmosphere, and you'd ...
7
votes
1answer
681 views
Ways to obtain thrust curves of different grain geometries
Different grain geometries in solid-fuel rockets produce various thrust curves:
I can imagine it's not too difficult to obtain a thrust curve of a specific grain geometry with a measurement while ...
34
votes
4answers
10k views
Why is there a hole in solid rocket engines?
I would like to find out why there is a straight hole down the middle in all solid rocket engine motors.
I thought it only makes sense in hybrid engines where pure oxygen needs to be blown down the ...
5
votes
0answers
162 views
How does solid propellant mean bulk temperature influence solid rocket thrust and specific impulse?
The relationship is not intuitively clear to me, would like an answer with references and/or graphs. The question arose while reading about Space Shuttle's SRBs.
6
votes
1answer
580 views
What was the first large rocket to use APCP solid fuel?
I'm surprised wikipedia doesn't have a history section for its APCP article. If I'm not mistaken, early solid rockets used something other than APCP, and really really early solid rockets used black ...
15
votes
4answers
3k views
For a typical Shuttle mission, how much solid fuel is leftover at SRB separation?
If I understand correctly, solid booster rockets never expend literally all their fuel before jetissoning, because the burn rate slows way down in the end and it would take too long to spend it all, ...
3
votes
6answers
738 views
Can solid rockets be used for flexible burn time by jettisoning them?
Solid rockets have some advantages such as high thrust (good for using the Oberth effect), storability and reliability. The main problem is that they fire all their fuel once in one set way. But ...
2
votes
1answer
172 views
Could the solid boosters of SLS be paired together to a rescue launcher?
The solid boosters of Shuttle/SLS fly in pairs. Could a pair of them fly without SLS, carrying a smaller second stage and payload to orbit? What capacity would it have?
A rescue launcher needs to ...
8
votes
3answers
978 views
Are ICBMs and orbital launchers similar enough to be co-developed today?
Russia has two types of hypergolic liquid fuel ICBMs deployed, UR-100N and R-36M2 Vojewoda and they are working on the big Sarmat. There's in this category also the Chinese DF-A5. (A list of ICBMs ...
10
votes
2answers
414 views
Can a crew access room (white room) be contaminated by rocket propellant residues during launch?
Observing a Space Shuttle launch, I noticed that the crew access gantry and its white room are too close to the SRB's flames during launch; the launch umbilical tower and its crew access device on ...
20
votes
1answer
2k views
Why were Delta II SRBs asymmetrically mounted?
This diagram of the Delta II 74xx-series shows 4 booster rockets mounted rather asymmetrically. All other things being equal, it looks like the net thrust of the set would push the rocket off-axis.
...
5
votes
1answer
269 views
Does the Oberth effect motivate complementing ion electric propulsion with chemical rocketry?
The solar electric ion propulsion engine of the Dawn spacecraft to Vesta and Ceres used Mars for gravity assist. Would it be gainful to complement an ion engine with a high thrust (solid) chemical ...
11
votes
3answers
3k views
Why weren't SRBs used in the design of the Saturn V?
Were solids considered for the Saturn V? If so, why was the idea discarded?
I would guess this is due to a number of reasons:
Inability to throttle
Technology readiness in the era
Launch escape
