Booster – Carbon fiber reinforced steel | Propulsion Workgroup | Forum

            I think that I briefly mentioned this a wile back, but now is a good time to put this idea out there. If we decide to go for a solid fueled booster it may be beneficial to take a different path from existing designs.

            The idea is to have the inner liner of the booster made from thin steel (2-4mm) and then wrap this in carbon fiber so that it will withstand the internal pressure and structural loading. The unburnt fuel should act as an insulation layer so that the carbon fiber doesn’t get too hot. This would entail wrapping the boosters (70cm in outside diameter is the current size estimate) in several layers of the material. In the aerospace industry they usually use large automated machines that rotate the part and apply the carbon fiber material (for aircraft fuselage sections). We would have to resort to manually wrapping it but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The carbon fiber will likely cost more than steel. But then again less launch mass equals less cost too. This is an optimization area that we need to look at.