ADVANCES IN GREEN CRYOGENIC SOLID PROPELLANT PROPULSION

摘要

The combustion of hydrocarbons with hydrogen peroxide or oxygen based oxidizers is known as the best possible realization of green bipropellants in the realm of conventional propellants. By the nature of these constituents, corresponding rocket motors are either hybrids or bi-liquids. This is advantageous in all applications requiring the merits of these categories, such as variations of the thrust - time profile (throttle-ability up to shut down and restart), or variable propellant loading and mixture ratio variation in liquid bipropellants. However, when it comes to thriving on the simplicity and reliability of solid propellant technology, it takes cryogenic solid propulsion (CSP) as enabling technology to make these normally liquid propellants available for many solid propellant applications, in particular for high thrust Earth-to-orbit boosting. It is obvious that proper CSP propellant selection yields solids that are as "green" as any chemical propellant combination can be. The paper describes recent advances in CSP technology related investigations sponsored by the German Aerospace Centre DLR and the European Space Agency ESA at AI/ICT.