Linear Aerospike Engine

[admin]

 

[admin]

Whatever happened to this motor? Never to be seen again?

[admin]

I found this:

Over 50 years ago an engine was designed that overcame the inherent design inefficiencies of bell-shaped rocket nozzles, but despite much research in the 60's, 70's and 90's and was to power the replacement for the Space Shuttle. But 50 years on and it still yet to be flight tested. So why aren't we using Aerospike rocket engines?

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

It's all about money.

The reasons Smart Phones have made a hundred years progress in ten years is the opportunity and reality of "OUTRAGEOUS" profits.

The current designs are too hot, and too heavy, and like a bullet, produce a drag vacuum behind them.

Merely a matter of engineering ... but GOOD engineering takes hundreds of highly motivated engineers and highly motivated companies.

So ... what motivates most engineers?

MONEY.

LOTS and lots of money.

You would be surprised, if you do not already know ... how motivational being grossly overpaid is... and how much it is inspirational.

Several times in my life, I was paid three times the going rate, and paid in advance ... and I finished projects scheduled to finish in six months ... in six weeks.

Not only that, I could walk down the beach with two buckets full of money, and didn't even have to suck my stomach in.

 

 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

The coanda effect is simple to understand, and it will make a big, hot fire .... but thrust is another thing, altogether.

Imagine the following video, with hydrogen gas being sucked into the fan, and burning along the outside of the disc ... reaction (thrust) is a function of throwing stuff behind you that is heavy, or light stuff going very, very fast.  But, it has to push against a surface 180 degrees from the action, to have an efficient and strong reaction.

The Coanda Effect (version 2013).mp4

[admin]

@James Thomas Rook Jr. So the thrust must be only “enhanced” slightly by this effect?

but enough to be an improvement?

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

Yes, and the reason is, at low altitudes the less effective  jets of burning fuel are pressed against the main jets by atmospheric pressure, and their own momentum, and the main jets "wall of fire" layer of friction imparts velocity to the auxiliary jets, because although the main jets are being ejected at many times the speed of sound, the hot and explosively expanding gas flow is turbulent.

What you are doing is trading the inefficiencies of the main jet (thrust = velocity x mass) through friction and the Bernoulli principle to the mass of the auxiliary jets' mass , but there are limits to everything.

I would imagine they are still trying to get that balancing act correct, and with the energies and fluid dynamics (the hot gasses) involved it is quite a trick.

They need some white haired old guy who knows to just come in and set aside the 20,000 pages of calculations and just tell them the answer, but then progress would not always be repeatable, and adaptable to new applications.

Sir Isaac Newton was a one time human phenomenon.

[admin]

I was also thinking that a lot of the knowledge from when those videos above were made was probably not passed down well in the bureaucratic NASA ....

SpaceX has made some strides.... not all has been lost.

I bet if Von Braun was around nowadays he wouldn't be impressed with our space exploration or space stations in the last 50 years.

Rocketdyne engineers alone (if they are still alive) are probably wondering why no one is using fuel injected thrust vectoring engines....etc....