Liquid rocket booster

A liquid rocket booster (LRB) is similar to a solid rocket booster (SRB) attached to the side of a rocket to give it extra lift at takeoff. A liquid rocket booster has fuel and oxidiser in liquid form, as opposed to a solid-fuel rocket or hybrid rocket.

Like solid boosters, liquid boosters can considerably increase the total payload to orbit. Unlike solid boosters, LRBs can be throttled down and are also capable of being shut down safely in an emergency, providing additional escape options for human spaceflight.

For the R-7 missile, which later evolved into the Soyuz rocket, this concept was chosen because it allows all of its many rocket engines to be ignited and checked for function with the rocket still on the launch pad.

The Soviet Energia rocket of the 1980s used four Zenit liquid fueled boosters to loft both the Shuttle Buran and the experimental Polyus space battlestation in two separate launches.

Two versions of the Japanese H-IIA space rocket would have used one or two LRBs to be able to carry extra cargo to higher geostationary orbits, but this plan was replaced by the H-IIB.

Rocket booster

Rocket booster may refer to:

Liquid-propellant rocket

A liquid-propellant rocket or liquid rocket is a rocket engine that uses liquid propellants. Liquids are desirable because their reasonably high density allows the volume of the propellant tanks to be relatively low, and it is possible to use lightweight centrifugal turbopumps to pump the propellant from the tanks into the combustion chamber, which means that the propellants can be kept under low pressure. This permits the use of low-mass propellant tanks, resulting in a high mass ratio for the rocket.

An inert gas stored in a tank at a high pressure is sometimes used instead of pumps in simpler small engines to force the propellants into the combustion chamber. These engines may have a lower mass ratio, but are usually more reliable. and are therefore used widely in satellites for orbit maintenance.

Liquid rockets can be monopropellant rockets using a single type of propellant, bipropellant rockets using two types of propellant, or more exotic tripropellant rockets using three types of propellant. Some designs are throttleable for variable thrust operation and some may be restarted after a previous in-space shutdown. Liquid propellants are also used in hybrid rockets, in which a liquid oxidizer is generally combined with a solid fuel.