Highly Operable Propulsion for Reusable Launch Vehicle Applications

摘要

A wide variety of reusable launch vehicle concepts for placing various payloads into low earth orbit are currently being evaluated for potential civil, commercial and military applications. This recent interest is being driven by a desire to achieve reduced payload launch costs and, in some cases, very rapid response capability. In most of these cases, the general requirements of the main propulsion system are similar: a high level of operational availability with minimal operational support activity. Consequently, evaluation of traditional expendable rocket engines as candidates for reusable applications has begun, with an emphasis on understanding whether or not a given engine's operating characteristics are inherently more reusable than another. In support of a planned program to demonstrate a low cost, rapid response reusable launch vehicle, several existing rocket engines were evaluated for feasibility to meet the requirements of a sub-scale reusable launch vehicle demonstrator. Critical propulsion characteristics were defined based on the demonstration objectives of the overall program. Potential candidate engines were selected and then evaluated against these critical propulsion characteristics, and a comparative assessment of each engine's ability to satisfy each critical characteristic was generated. Finally, a reference engine was designated along with a reference demonstrator vehicle concept. This vehicle concept was evaluated for its feasibility to satisty the reusable launch vehicle demonstrator program objectives, and determined to meet the stated goals with residual capability for possible later applications.