Boffins demo self-eating rocket engine in Scotland
- Reference: 1704892505
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/01/10/selfeating_rocket_engine/
- Source link:
Autophage engines – where the rocket effectively consumes itself – were first proposed and patented in 1938. However, [2]it took until 2018 before boffins managed to design and fire one in a controlled manner. Nearly five years on, and more progress is being made: more energetic liquid propellants can be used, and the fuselage can be fed into the rocket without buckling.
The next step will be producing a flight vehicle, something Krzysztof Bzdyk, a postgraduate researcher at the James Watt School of Engineering, tells The Register could make a suborbital test flight as soon as 2027. Fingers crossed.
[3]
The prototype, dubbed Ouroborous-3, generated 100 newtons of thrust at the MachLab facility at Machrihanish Airbase in Scotland. The video below shows the rocket in action, demonstrating the fuselage being consumed while the rocket is throttled and pulsed. The boffins presented their paper for AIAA SciTech attendees in Orlando, Florida this week.
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[6]Youtube Video
A rocket's mass changing during flight is one thing – rockets do get lighter as fuel burns – but dealing with markedly different geometry if the fuselage is shrinking is something altogether different.
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Bzdyk tells us that while it is still early days, lessons could be learned from current launch vehicles with regard to thrust vectoring and reaction control.
"We may also look at spin-stabilized rockets," he says.
A high priority is scaling up the rocket and creating a flight demonstrator. Bzdyk tells us: "Our tests coming up with the [UK] space agency are going to be looking at 1,000 Newtons of thrust, and our flight demonstrator in 2027 will probably be around 6,000 Newtons of thrust.
[8]
"For an orbital launch vehicle to deliver one payload into orbit, we'd probably be around 20,000 Newtons of thrust."
To put that in context, one of the Rutherford engines that powers Rocket Lab's Electron booster generates around 25,000 Newtons of thrust at sea level.
Not that there are plans to get too big. Bzdyk says the team does not intend to scale up too far. Instead, the plan is to use the technology to miniaturize launch vehicles further and overcome the challenges of propellant and structure as rockets get smaller.
[9]NASA's VIPER is half-built, with launch plans for this year
[10]Stratolaunch takes ready-to-fly hypersonic craft skyward, but still no launch
[11]NASA's modified Boeing 747 SP SOFIA to be grounded for good
[12]This drag sail could prevent spacecraft from turning into long-term orbiting junk. We spoke to its inventors ahead of launch
"If you can use some of your structure as a source of fuel, that allows you to miniaturize it farther ... I don't think we're really trying to encroach on conventional launch vehicles, it's more looking at the small payload type launches."
As satellites continue to shrink, the time might have come for the autophage rocket engine. With the structure of a conventional rocket making up anywhere from five to 12 percent of its total mass, using even a portion of that as fuel will make for a smaller rocket, or the potential for more payload.
Development of the team's autophage engine will continue with the support of new funding from the UK Space Agency (UKSA) and the Sciences and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_1033908_en.html
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/25/boffins_unveil_a_rocket_that_will_eat_itself/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZZ7NOS7vvyePyvsHIMXezgAAAcQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZZ7NOS7vvyePyvsHIMXezgAAAcQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZZ7NOS7vvyePyvsHIMXezgAAAcQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://youtu.be/GL9wODPvtDU
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZZ7NOS7vvyePyvsHIMXezgAAAcQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZZ7NOS7vvyePyvsHIMXezgAAAcQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/02/nasas_viper_is_halfbuilt/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/06/stratolaunch_hypersonic_craft/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/29/sofia_end_of_mission/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/01/sail_orbital_debris/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Pedant? moi?
Not sure what the 'us' is doing in there either. It just adds to the confusion. Possibly should be a 'that'.
Re: Pedant? moi?
I’ve just read the article and evidently it’s now been fixed.
By the way, from personal experience I can tell you that the Reg team prefer corrections to be sent via the link (at the top of each comments page) - and they’ve been known to get mildly acerbic if this process isn’t followed.
Re: Pedant? moi?
The problem is that quality control for EVERYTHING is becoming a thing of the past. It doesn't matter if it's software, airliners, or journalism, nothing is being checked for quality anymore.
My first instinct was that it is a cost thing, but I think the public is just starting to accept poor quality everywhere now. The more accessible everything is, the lower the quality of the output.
Take for example video/film production. It used to be that it took a team of professionals with expensive equipment to make a film or to shoot a video. Now everyone has a Youtube channel with highly variable production quality (it seems that nobody can get their audio levels right).
Newspapers used to send trained photographers out with reporters to cover stories, now the reporters are told "to just use your phone". An f'ing phone! Not even a proper camera!
Publishing a book used to require a publisher and a professional editor. Now anyone can self-publish. Typos, bad grammar , and all.
The list could go on and on. The threshold for "good enough" is getting lower every day. It seems that British Leyland was just ahead of their time...
That seems like a fun place to work.
I don't know if our resident vulture watched the YouTube video all the way through - but it finishes with the rocket exploding
That's not an explosion, that's a fart after it has finished digesting itself.
"Instead, the plan is to use the technology to miniaturize launch vehicles further"
That way madness lies if it's not just for hobby or research. There's not that much market for launching dedicated tiny sats to a custom orbit (counter to mass launching on a ride-share to a maybe not ideal but good enough orbit) and you're butting your head against strongly diminishing returns in propellant to payload mass fractions. A super big rocket (like SpaceX Falcon 9 or ULA Vulcan, is always going to be cheaper per KG to orbit than a tiny one.
caseless ammunition
meet structure-free rocket engines.......
Let's hope they teach it to know when to stop.
Pedant? moi?
I'm assuming that this sentence :
"Bzdyk says us the team does intend to scale things up too far"
is supposed to read:
"Bzdyk says us the team does not intend to scale things up too far".
I do find this grammatical error curious: it seems to happen more and more in general life (news reports, social media posts etc etc) and I can't fathom where it comes from. Missing out a negative completely changes the meaning of a sentence. In this case admittedly it simply makes the sentence difficult to parse, but often the omitted negative completely changes the meaning that the writer is attempting to convey.