Posted on 04/15/2015 12:55:30 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Chief Executive Peter Beck said the company founded in 2008 to help commercialize the space business, expected to carry out the first flight of its all-composite Electron launch vehicle and the new Rutherford engine before the end of the year.
Beck said the engine was also the first to use 3D printing for all primary components, including its engine chamber, injector, pumps and main propellant valves, all mostly made of titanium and other alloys.
The lightweight engine can be 'printed' in three days, compared to about a month if it were built using traditional manufacturing.
Rocket Lab, which is based in Los Angeles and has a launch site in New Zealand, says the two-stage Electron rocket will make it cheaper and quicker to launch small 100-kilogram payloads into low-earth orbit.
...
Beck said the batteries on the new launcher would produce just shy of one megawatt of power, enough to power a whole city block.
The engine's electric propulsion cycle uses electric motors and lithium polymer batteries to drive its turbopumps at extremely high speeds.
Rocket Lab aims to help companies that want to launch hundreds and thousands of small satellites into low-earth orbit to provide space-based access to the Internet, respond to natural disasters and improve crop yields.
Beck said the company had been working on the Rutherford engine for the past year and a half, racing to meet growing demand from companies ranging from Google Inc to small Silicon Valley startups.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I think the battery just powers the pumps that push the fuel into the combustion chamber. But it still runs on refined dinosaurs.
Apparently the batteries power the pumps,but the here’s still propellant that creates the thrust. Pretty conventional.
Space is going to get crowded.
The Rutherford Engine is an electric turbo-pumped LOX/RP-1 engine specifically designed for the Electron launch vehicle, capable of 4,600 lbf thrust and with an ISP of 327 s.
Rutherford adopts an entirely new propulsion cycle, making use of brushless DC motors and high performance Lithium Polymer batteries to drive its turbo pumps.
Rutherford is also the first oxygen/hydrocarbon engine to use additive manufacturing for all primary components, including the regeneratively cooled thrust chamber, injector, pumps, and main propellant valves.
Electron uses two variants of the Rutherford engine, a sea level and a vacuum engine. The vacuum variant differs only in nozzle shape, which is tailored to suit the vacuum conditions outside Earth’s atmosphere. The duplicate engine design for both stages makes Electron highly optimized for fast production.
The engine is named after the famous New Zealand born physicist Ernest Rutherford.
RP-1 is a refined form of kerosene similar to jet fuel, used as rocket fuel.
LOX is Liquid oxygen.
It's not an electric rocket.
If you think there is a lot of space junk out there now just wait until there are “hundreds of thousands” of satellites in low earth orbit.
Even so, not having to burn fuel to spin the turbopumps is potentially pretty big.
The fuel pumps in an orbital rocket use a lot of fuel that doesn't directly contribute anything to thrust. This results in a significant reduction in Isp, which you basically can't have enough of.
The Russian RD-180 engine that powers some of our launches today uses a system that "recycles" the fuel pump drive turbine exhaust into the main engine's exhaust stream, thereby recapturing some of the work lost to the task of pumping fuel into the combustion chamber.
The RD-180 accomplishes this, but at a price: the turbopump engine has to operate at engine chamber pressure, which puts it under a lot of additional stress. RD-180s have been known to blow up on the launch pad. IIRC, they are not "man-rated," largely for this reason.
My first thought was “Bargain Basement Ballistic Missiles”
Iran could use one of these.
The good thing is that re-entry gets a little tricky. The bad thing is with nuclear devices you just have to get close.
We are simply too nice with bad guys.
A company called Escape Dynamics is working on a rocket powered by microwave beams on the ground.
I thought this was a thread about Hillary’s campaign launch.
You’re thinking of Hillary’s battery-powered “mystery machine”
LOL! Great turn of the phrase.
The batteries, motors and pumps would have to weigh less than the turbopumps and fuel they consume for this to work. Batteries weigh less than fuel producing the same energy? The turbopumps on the shuttle produced thousands of HP.
The Tesla has 1200 pounds of batteries to equal a 100 pound tank full of gas.
Yeah, great point.
The four fuel and ox pumps in the SSMEs generated the following rated horsepower:
| LP ox | 1614 |
| HP ox | 22880 |
| LP H2 | 3330 |
| HP H2 | 63080 |
| total | 90904 |
Almost 100,000 horsepower. A lot more than a Tesla.
Yep, it only needs its batteries, electric motors and turbopumps—no fuel or combustion! Just listen to the rumble and the wind!
The Marching Morons
By C. M. Kornbluth
http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/kornbluthcm-marchingmorons/kornbluthcm-marchingmorons-00-e.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.