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Successful First Launch of Aerospike Engine

Posted by michael on from the whoosh-bang dept.

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."

2 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. For the lbf impaired by CausticWindow · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
  2. Redefined success by Tap-Sa · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.