Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Jerry Irvine
NASA has a purchasing process problem not a lack of available rockets problem.
I have flown high performance rockets in downtown LA for FX deals. You just need a steerable parachute on all parts to land them in a designated LZ.
As you know from your own experience, rocket motors are not "ordnance" and liquids have so many costs and problems solids should always be the first choice as they are with virtually all tactical missiles.
|
I wasn't being sarcastic; I was just pointing out an unfortunate but unavoidable issue when working with NASA, who at least partly fund many university sounding rocket experiments. I know that their rules often have the effect (whether or not it's intended) of "freezing out" contractors outside of their "inner circle" of legacy suppliers. If they don't want to use a company's hardware--for whatever reason--and a university experimenter wants to fly a payload at Wallops, White Sands, Poker Flat, or another fixed or mobile range that NASA uses, the experimenter has to settle for whatever NASA-used rocket(s) best fit his or her requirements. Also:
I don't know if a conventional sounding rocket (even if fitted with a Saab S-19 [or other] guidance system and a steerable parachute) would be allowed to fly in such a small space (even Esrange's "small" downrange impact area is only small in comparison with those of Andøya, Poker Flat, and Wallops; it's quite large in comparison with downtown LA). Sounding rockets drop unretarded parts such as nose cones and lower stages, which need plenty of empty land or sea in which to fall safely. Blue Origin's landing pad for New Shepard is only about two miles from its launch pad (see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin ), which is due to its very "compact" trajectory ellipse, and it doesn't drop unretarded, unguided components. Even considering a two-mile radius all around its launch pad (or even a five-mile radius, for a "safety buffer"), such reusable VTOVL suborbital vehicles can fly safely in much smaller areas than traditional sounding rockets. In addition:
Solids are simpler than liquids, but they are ordnance, having TNT equivalence ratings (the Maxus guided sounding rocket's Castor IVB motor can detonate if dropped from a height of 1 meter or more during handling), while unfueled liquid propellant vehicles are safe (and less massive, even if somewhat larger) to handle. Throttlable, reloadable hybrids would be even safer than liquids for suborbital VTOVL spacecraft, having TNT equivalences of zero. (For suborbital vehicles, where the mass ratio isn't so critical, the hybrid motors could have tough, thick-walled maraging steel motor cases that could be reloaded many times. The aft closure could be bolted on for ease of fuel grain casting, or a gel-type uncured fuel [which would cure into a hard rubber fuel grain] could be pumped into a "unitary" hybrid motor case, using an inflatable or dissolveable mandrel to create the center void in the fuel grain.)