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4:29 am
December 6, 2009
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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| posts 1483 | |
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A fairly basic important design decision: do we want to do this with a one or two stage rocket?
Rocket Labs in NZ (who are the nearest case study to us, since they used a N2O oxidised hybrid engine) used a two stage rocket to get above 100km.
CSXT appear to have practically zero technical information about their rocket on their website, but it certainly looks one stage.
Obviously a single stage solution would be the simplest and hence the "most CSTART" way to do this, but if we assume that CSXT used a non-hybrid engine, or a hybrid engine with LOX oxidiser, it may be that they were only able to do this in one stage due to the increased thrust of a liquid engine or LOX hybrid.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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4:54 am
December 6, 2009
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brmj
| | Rochester, New York, United States | |
| Member | posts 402 | |
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I checked, and CSXT used a solid engine. Some of what is on their site implies that it is single stage, though I can't prove it.
Personally, I favor a single stage design for simplicity and because we will need to be able to build really big engines for any of this to work, anyway.
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Main work groups: Propulsion (booster), Spacecraft Engineering, Computer Systems, Navigation and Guidance (software)
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7:28 am
December 6, 2009
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
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| posts 1483 | |
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If they really did use a solid engine, I am all the more impressed at their achievement! And all the more confident that we can do this in a single stage. In light of this, I can't see any compelling argument to go with a two stage design (other than, perhaps, to get experience with staging).
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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8:42 am
December 6, 2009
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Rocket-To-The-Moon
| | Altus, Oklahoma, USA | |
| Member | posts 685 | |
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Post edited 3:06 pm – December 6, 2009 by Rocket-To-The-Moon
Yes CSXT used a single stage solid motor. I saw a good video about it that explained its flight profile. I'll be right back with that.
I must have imagined that video. Here is a picture of the rockets flight profile. Basically the motor burns with very high thrust for a matter of seconds. The rocket reached 6,800km/h in 10 seconds (19.26g acceleration) and then coasted upward for an additional 60 kilometers.
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Main Workgroups: Propulsion & Spacecraft Engineering
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