Successful First Launch of Aerospike Engine

ScottKin writes "CSULB announced that on September 21st they achieved a milestone in aerospace engineering when they successfully launched their 'Prospector 2' rocket powered by an 'Aerospike' engine. What makes this remarkable is that even NASA had trouble with testing their incarnation of an Aerospike engine - but the Linear Aerospike Engine is quite a different beast. More info on this definitely-newsworthy even can be found at the California Space Authority website."

Comments

For the lbf impaired

[CausticWindow]

The sea level thrust of this engince (204,420 lbf) is equivalent to 900,404 Newtons.

In comparison, the Space Shuttle engines produce 2,174,286 Newtons at sea level.

Aerospike introduction

[David Kennedy]

If you're not a rocket scientist, here's a very readable introduction to aerospike engines.

Caution: It is rocket science, and a little bit of maths is required to appreciate even this introduction.

story from CSULB with a little more detail

[caillon]

http://www.csulb.edu/colleges/coe/ae/rockets/aeros pike/ft-1/flight-1.htm

Sadly

[panurge]

The article has more spin than a British Government press release.

The motor worked except that, well actually it went badly wrong very soon after launch. Combustion gases went the wrong way and caused the engine to malfunction.
Result: crash. Destruction of payload.

I guess the definition of success came from the people who defined "interception" of Scuds by Patriots in Gulf war 1 as meaning more or less that both missiles were in the air at the same time.

Meanwhile, relatively primitive Russian rockets continue very reliable and Ariane just put up another two comms satellites last night, plus the European moon mission which is aiming for some sort of record as the slowest trip to the Moon ever. Far from being an endorsement of private research versus NASA, it suggests that caution and extensive testing remains the norm in anything to do with rocketry. Even if the next flight is successful, I guess a huge amount of further work would be needed before anyone would risk a real commercial payload on a rocket using this nozzle technology.

Redefined success

[Tap-Sa]

As said in their site the goal was to get off the pad. Anything puffing hot gases generally downwards while being guided by quite a long launch rail achieves that, including 'several' seconds of stable flight. Engineers in the 60s could have done the same easily but they knew the result without even trying and their goal was in the orbit, not one foot above the pad.

Real innovation in this engine is the use of ablative shielding inside the chamber. But that makes it even harder to overcome the original problem of this type of engine; having steady and stable burn/gas flow (ie. equal thrust) around the annulus. Linear aerospike engine does this by replacing one large chamber with numerous small ones which are easier to control.