New XCOR Rocket Engine Passes First Test 135
apsmith writes "XCOR Aerospace just successfully test-fired their new liquid oxygen/kerosene rocket engine. This is significantly more powerful than the engines used in the XCOR EZ-Rocket vehicle, and will be further developed for use in the Xerus suborbital vehicle. XCOR is one of the serious X-Prize contenders, and partly funded by John Carmack of Id and Armadillo Aerospace (Carmack's in-his-free-time X-prize contender)."
Cost Effective? (Score:5, Funny)
Note that omitting a reentry vehicle could substantially save on fuel costs.
Re:Cost Effective? (Score:3, Funny)
Absolutely. We'd all contribute to that fund. The real question is whether or not it'd be a cost effective way to send anything else into space.
Re:Jew Effective? (Score:1)
What? Heh. Why do you care about my quips?
Re:Cost Effective? (Score:1)
I don't understand why the spacesuit guys don't team up with the rocket guys and just combine the two into something small and feasible, designed to get *just one body* into orbit.
Who needs a cockpit? Just give me a good suit with rockets on it.
That's one small boost for man,.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:That's one small boost for man,.. (Score:1)
Re:That's one small boost for man,.. (Score:2)
What do you reckon.. (Score:5, Funny)
What do you reckon the chances are of me being able to get hold of one of these babies for my car?
I reckon.. (Score:5, Funny)
Soko
The "real" Rocket Car (Score:2)
... if you can believe this story [bored.com].
Re:I reckon.. (Score:2)
Re:I reckon.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What do you reckon.. (Score:1)
Probably Re:What do you reckon.. (Score:2)
I suspect they might consider it for the right price, if you could sort out the legalities so they don't get sued; rocketry is relatively expensive.
Uhrm... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Uhrm... (Score:1)
Only one word to describe this news... (Score:3)
I can hear it now (Score:3, Funny)
Danger??? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm no scientist, but I am aware that liquid oxygen or LOX as it's reffered tho happens to be compressed oxygen (approx. 4000 times the amount that in the air), and this will dramatically increase the speed that a shuttle will be incinerated during a disaster, as the LOX will feed the explosions.
With advancements comes risk in my opinion.
Anybody who knows more then me, would be able to soothe my thoughts and tell me someone on such a shuttle would have a chance of survival is this were to leak?
Re:Danger??? (Score:2)
Re:Danger??? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Danger??? (Score:4, Informative)
The fuel (alcohol in earlier prototypes, kerosene for this one) is carried in a separate tank slung below the fuselage. It's outside the aircraft frame.
If you've taken fire safety training, you know that there are three components that are required for a fire - fuel, oxidizer, and heat. Remove any one, and you don't have a fire. When you're fueling you car, the gasonline doesn't spontaneously ignite with the oxygen in the air, right? Add heat and you've got a fire, though.
So, if you keep the fuel, oxidizer and heat in controlled environments, you'll survive the flight just fine. If the O2 tank ruptures, you should probably worry more about schrapnel or the overpressure.
Re:Danger??? (Score:1)
Sometimes it does [esdjournal.com], and it doesnt require heat so much as a source of ignition, which could (and has) come from something as innocuous as a cell phone or PDA. Granted, there's heat produced
in the spark, but my point is people seem to think you need an open flame to ignite gasoline.
Refueling fires are something that's going to become more and more of a p
Re:Danger??? (Score:1)
Re:Danger??? (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, don't be stupid when refueling, but you don't have to be totally paranoid either. A touch of commmon sense reduces the chance of an accident to "act of god" probabilites.
Re:Danger??? (Score:1)
Saying "dont be stupid when refueling" is useless, because people are stupid and cavalier about it.
When I had a boat and would pull up to a marina, they wouldnt start fueling until everyone was out of the craft, and had some sensible but rigorously enforced safety rul
Re:Danger??? (Score:2)
Re:Danger??? (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like oxygen toxicity begins at about 10 times sea-level partial pressure of oxygen (article cites 29 lb/sqin). How stuff works [howstuffworks.com] explains that the process is very dependent on both pressure (not % of atmosphere!) and time. Early astronauts used 100% oxygen atmospheres at a low pressure without any problems.
Re:Danger??? (Score:2)
Except being torched.
I know you meant toxicity-wise, but jeez, that was a dumb accident [nasa.gov].
Re:Danger??? (Score:1)
Re:Danger??? (Score:5, Informative)
Much of my scuba diving is limited by this number. I usually dive EAN32 (32%O2 68%N2) for my recreational diving, and at 128fsw (the local pressure equivalent to a column of salt water 128 feet tall with 1ata on the top), the ppO2 is 1.6ata. That's the MOD (Maximum Operating Depth). Don't go deeper than that. Even accidentally. So I limit my dives on EAN32 to 110feet to stay away from that invisible boundary where risk starts to accumulate.
You're right that whether you get hit is variable on pressure and time, it also depends on the individual's body, how fit they are, how rested they are, if they've done recent exertion and lots of other variables we don't understand. You can be tested (in a hyperbaric chamber) and make it to 4.0ata for an hour on one run and then a month later get a CNS hit on the way past 2.0 at the start of the run.
Also, a CNS hit isn't really harmful itself. When you're lying down in a hyperbaric chamber and you get hit, you go into a mild convulsion, lose conciousness, they drop the pressure, you wake up none the worse for wear. What hurts is when you need to be concious to keep doing something important (like keep the breathing regulator in your mouth on a scuba dive, or like continue to pilot the vehicle).
Finally, there is another kind of injury from elevated oxygen levels, where your lungs get burned from long exposures (long is hours and days, depending on how elevated the pressure is). This is why when you're in the hospital and need extra O2, they don't put you in an pure O2 environment and leave you there. The tissue in your lungs degrades and that injury can eventually be more serious than whatever you were on the supplemental O2 for. This is sometimes called Systemic OxTox, though it has a few names.
In either case, as others have mentioned, you're more likely to be burned by the LOX freezing your skin or the shrapnel from the bursting container than by breathing the extra O2. It also may not help the situation that the suddenly reduced temps in the cockpit cause all of the windows to frost up just as you're losing engine power...
Regards,
Ross
Liquid oxygen (Score:2)
Well, what if they frezee to death?
Re:Liquid oxygen (Score:2)
In the incredibly unlikely event that LOX vents into the cockpit, Just crack open the canopy for a bit. The EZ-Rocket is a subsonic vehicle limited by the do-not-exceed speed of the airframe (about 195 knots) so you're not going all that fast, especially when gliding.
Also, there is a large manual lever the pilot can pull to dump the LOX out the back. We've actually done this on a safe abort flight, to lighten the airplane for an early landing. (go here [xcor.com] for detai
Re:Danger??? (Score:5, Informative)
The current shuttle uses liquid oxygen, by the way, along with(surprise) liquid hydrogen. Together they fuel the orbiter's engines. The boosters on the side are solid-fuel motors and once they're lit, they don't go out until the fuel's burned.
Incidentally, every rocket fuel of one kind or another has to have some oxidizer, or it won't work in space(think that one through.) Most rockets for non-space applications have oxidizers, too, because it's hard to get oxygen from the air mixed in with fuel fast/well enough to be useful(this is why ramjets were so 'neat', they don't need to carry oxidizer, but can generate enormous amounts of thrust at incredible speeds.)
The orbiter also uses hydrazine for the auxiliary power units and firing thrusters(I think), and a half dozen other things that go 'boom' or are very nasty. That's the whole point behind rocket fuel- burning it has to release a LOT of energy for its weight.
Re:Danger??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most do, but not all. Hydrogen Peroxide is often used by itself as a monopropellant rocket fuel, for instance: just run it past a platinum screen and it reacts all on its own, no air required. However, it doesn't put out nearly as much thrust as kerosene and LOX.
Jon Acheson
Re:Danger??? (Score:1)
At the risk of achieving my first-ever negative mod, let me point out that "oxidizer" doesn't mean "air," and doesn't even mean oxygen. It just means something that will strip electrons from the fuel source (just like 2H +O2 --> 2H+ plus O2-- ; and sorry about no superscripts there).
BTW IIRC the platinum is just
Re:Danger??? (Score:2)
Re:Danger??? (Score:2)
Not quite. Recall that rockets work by throwing fluid away. There is a class of rockets, such as solar or nuclear heated propellent or ion or plasma drives, that don't require oxidisers.
Re:Danger??? (Score:1)
Propelants / Re:Danger??? (Score:5, Informative)
Challenger... I rest my case.
LOX (Liquid OXygen) is used because it is both cheap, freely avilable and less dangerous than most other oxidisers. For more info on propelants in general, see here [astronautix.com]. For LOX + kerosene in particular, the link is here [astronautix.com]. Off course, if you want to get away from the nasty cryogenic oxidicers, you could always go for hydrogenperoxside and kerosene (se data here [astronautix.com]). Off course, H2O2 is more expencive and way more poisonous than LOX, but it's give and take... In large quantities, 95 per cent hydrogen peroxide then cost approximately $1.00 per kg - LOX on the other hand cost about 0.08$ per kg. Or you could get exotic and use Liquid Fluorine and Kerosene wich gives a Isp: 322.00 sl. compared to a Isp: 300.00 sl. for LOX/Kerosene (se data here [astronautix.com]) - but then LF was kosting 6.00$ in 1959, and I don't think the price has dropped.
So in short, LOX has a few drawbacks, but the benefits of using it outweights them. Oh, and Encyclopedia Astronautica [astronautix.com] is a good place to find this sort of info.
Re:Propelants / Re:Danger??? (Score:2)
Re:Danger??? (Score:1)
Given the track record of the US shuttle (0 survivors out of 2 explosions, one actually involving LOX), I'd say none.
Re:Danger??? (Score:2)
The only way to mitigate the danger is to design the system to be as foolproof as possible.
Re:Danger??? (Score:1)
Hydrogen Peroxide or any other monopropellant decomposes (energetically) as opposed to "burning".
A propellant leak can be VERY dangerous, or it can be benign, depending on the location and severity of the leak. If a valve has a slight leak, it may not be much of a problem. I
Re:Danger??? (Score:2)
So it's better that a shuttle incinerates slowly...
Educational uses (Score:3, Funny)
I'm particularly fascinated by the educational uses. How long until high school teachers fire real rockets to demonstrate Newton's third law? That'd be the day! No more boredom in school :)
Re:Educational uses (Score:3, Funny)
--
Re:Educational uses (Score:4, Funny)
When I was in school, I actually had a physics professor who brought in a .22-caliber rifle and fired it at a swinging metal pendulum, in order to demonstrate transfer of momentum. None of us in the class were prepared for this, and were somewhat alarmed when this batty old guy pulled the rifle out from behind his desk and started shooting. I think he retired after that semester.
Re:Educational uses (Score:3, Interesting)
--Mike
XCOR Aerospace
Re:Educational uses (Score:2)
Re:Educational uses -- FOR Mike@xcor (Score:2)
Mike -- If your company is really interested in developing an educational project and are simply lacking the funding to begin the project, drop me a note (taylorja at clarkson dot edu). I'm a faculty member in the Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering department and would be willing to try to help out.
Re:Educational uses (Score:2)
That's old hat. My Highschool Geometry Lessons (Score:1)
We did this in my highschool geometry class using model rockets. We had several observers at known distances from the launch site who measured the angle of the rocket when it reached it's highest point. We then used the data to calculate the altitude of the rocket.
Model rockets are very widely available toys, and a lot of fun for junior and senior geeks alike. Me and my brothers built and played with them all the
Re:Educational uses (Score:2)
how's it work? (Score:4, Funny)
When it runs low on pressure, do you have to pump the little plunger a zillion times until you're back to full-blast?
(if you haven't been camping and used a coleman lantern, you won't get this.)
Re:how's it work? (Score:2)
Re:how's it work? (Score:2)
Coleman fuel is more like gasoline than kerosene...note that some of the newer stoves and lanterns can run on unleaded. You could run the older ones on unleaded as well, as long as you didn't mind that the generator wouldn't last as long.
One time while cutting the grass, the mower ran out of gas. Rather than lug a jerry-can to a gas
Name... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Name... (Score:2)
second test (Score:2)
What is your name?
What is your quest?
What is the power of lobbyists for the current technology?
Re:Check out the ignitor shown on that page! (Score:3)
Maybe you should go work for NASA.
Re:Check out the ignitor shown on that page! (Score:1)
Re:Check out the ignitor shown on that page! (Score:1)
Last month, we did over 300 tests of that igniter in one afternoon just to verify the statistical reliability- and it passed with flying colors.
We've tried expensive aircraft style flush-face spark plugs, and they don't work as well as the cheapo units. Sometimes the inexpensive solution is also the be
Stay Away from me (Score:2, Funny)
Amateur rocketry usually leads to one thing (think "smoking empty boots sitting at the bottom of a large crater"), and I don't want to get hit with the shrapnel.
Re:Stay Away from me (Score:1)
This is High Technology. (Score:4, Insightful)
Close study of the Igniter [xcor.com] shows that a key component is a Champion Y-8 Spark Plug?
This is Rocket Science, man!
Re:This is High Technology. (Score:2)
Re:This is High Technology. (Score:5, Informative)
--Mike
Re:This is High Technology. (Score:1)
Why don't y'all get some TEB?
Re:This is High Technology. (Score:2)
Armadillo also uses this approach, they're using standard NOS injectors to feed the peroxide into the engine.
NASA stuff is so expensive because they develop everything in-house. That's good when you need absolute quality control, but it skyrockets the price.
Travis
Re:This is High Technology. (Score:2)
Sometimes the simplest approach (Score:2)
Spark plugs are a proven, reliable, and mature technology.
Bush on board! (Score:1)
But seriously folks, 1800 lbs of thrust just does not seem very manly when compared to the Saturn V F1's [boeing.com] 1.5 million lbs of studly thrustosterone. Ugh - more power!
Saturn V (Score:2)
Well, consider that the Saturn V weighed about 6.7 million pounds [wikipedia.org], and the rocket used five F1 engines providing a total of 7.5 million pounds of thrust, then the net upward force is actually only 800,000 pounds, or 160,000 pounds per F1 engine. So about 9/10ths of the thrust is used just to counteract the weight of the rocket itself (at least
Radio Stations (Score:2, Funny)
important correction (Score:5, Informative)
For more information about our Suborbital program, visit our suborbital page at:
http://www.xcor.com/suborbital.html
--Mike Massee
XCOR Aerospace
Carmack (Score:1)
Cool, but where is Doom III?
Wow (Score:2)
Any stats on the energy/gram of that stuff?
LOX and kerosene but there is one more cost (Score:1)
I have heard of a company that was trying to use solid/liquid rocket technology that used regular rubber as the fuel source and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. The pictures of it were like the space shuttle solid rocket booster .
What happened to that company ? anyone know ?
Re:LOX and kerosene but there is one more cost (Score:1)
rubber+LOX (Score:2)
I can't see how that could possibly burn cleanly [google.com].
Re:LOX and kerosene but there is one more cost (Score:1)
From what I've read, the people at xcor are more than capable of doing the math.
Re:LOX and kerosene but there is one more cost (Score:1)
Beam me... (Score:1)
Blow me up Scotty.... nope, not desireable
Blast me up Scotty.... Sigh, not the same ring to it
Lift me up Scotty.... Too perverse...
Fly me up Scotty.... Even worse
Oh heck, back to engineering.....
Timetable? (Score:1)
Re:Timetable? (Score:2)
competition for the space shuttle? (Score:1)
FREE TRIAL OFFER! LOOK INSIDE! GREAT OFFER! (Score:2)
Re:Vacation Time (Score:5, Funny)
This is slashdot. Maybe a PERL conference in space, but not a honeymoon.
Re:Vacation Time (Score:5, Funny)
You have greater challenges towards having a honey moon than getting into space.
Re:Vacation Time (Score:2)
Re:Vacation Time (Score:1)
What's wrong with the current cheese moon?
Re:Hi, I'm John Carmack (Score:1)