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INTRODUCTON
A rocket engine, or simply "rocket," is a jet engine that uses only
propellant mass for forming its high speed propulsive jet. Rocket engines are
reaction engines and obtain thrust in accordance with Newton's third law. Since
they need no external material to form their jet, rocket engines can be used for
spacecraft propulsion as well as terrestrial uses, such as missiles. Most rocket
engines are internal combustion engines, although non combusting forms also
exist.

Rocket engines as a group, have the highest exhaust velocities, are

by far the lightest, and are the most energy efficient (at least at very high speed) of
all types of jet engines. However, for the thrust they give, due to the high exhaust
velocity and relatively low specific energy of rocket propellant, they consume
propellant very rapidly.

TERMINOLOGY
Chemical rockets are rockets powered by exothermic chemical reactions of the
propellant.

Rocket motor (or solid-propellant rocket motor) is a synonymous term with

rocket engine that usually refers to solid rocket engines.

Liquid rockets (or liquid-propellant rocket engine) use one or more liquid
propellants that are held in tanks prior to burning.

Hybrid rockets have a solid propellant in the combustion chamber and a second
liquid or gas propellant is added to permit it to burn.

Thermal rockets are rockets where the propellant is inert, but is heated by a power
source such as solar or nuclear power or beamed energy.
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PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION

How rocket engines work

Rocket engines give part of their thrust due to unopposed pressure on the
combustion chamber

Rocket engines produce thrust by the expulsion of a high-speed fluid

exhaust. This fluid is nearly always a gas which is created by high pressure (10-
200 bar) combustion of solid or liquid propellants, consisting of fuel and oxidizer
components, within a combustion chamber.

The fluid exhaust is then passed through a propelling nozzle which

typically uses the heat energy of the gas to accelerate the exhaust to very high
speed, and the reaction to this pushes the engine in the opposite direction.

In rocket engines, high temperatures and pressures are highly desirable

for good performance as this permits a longer nozzle to be fitted to the engine,
which gives higher exhaust speeds, as well as giving better thermodynamic
efficiency.
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Introducing Propellant Into A Combustion Chamber

Rocket propellant is mass that is stored, usually in some form of
propellant tank, prior to being ejected from a rocket engine in the form of a fluid
jet to produce thrust.

Chemical rocket propellants are most commonly used, which undergo

exothermic chemical reactions which produce hot gas which is used by a rocket for
propulsive purposes. Alternatively, a chemically inert reaction mass can be heated
using a high-energy power source via a heat exchanger, and then no combustion
chamber is used.

A solid rocket motor.

Solid rocket propellants are prepared as a mixture of fuel and oxidizing

components called 'grain' and the propellant storage casing effectively becomes the
combustion chamber. Liquid-fueled rockets typically pump separate fuel and
oxidizer components into the combustion chamber, where they mix and burn.
Hybrid rocket engines use a combination of solid and liquid or gaseous propellants.
Both liquid and hybrid rockets use injectors to introduce the propellant into the
chamber. These are often an array of simple jets- holes through which the
propellant escapes under pressure; but sometimes may be more complex spray
nozzles. When two or more propellants are injected the jets usually deliberately
collide the propellants as this breaks up the flow into smaller droplets that burn
more easily.
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COMBUSTION CHAMBER
For chemical rockets the combustion chamber is typically just a cylinder,
and flame holders are rarely used. The dimensions of the cylinder are such that the
propellant is able to combust thoroughly; different propellants require different
combustion chamber sizes for this to occur. This leads to a number called L * :

where:

• Vc is the volume of the chamber

• At is the area of the throat

L* is typically in the range of 25–60 inches (0.63–1.5 m).

The combination of temperatures and pressures typically reached in a

combustion chamber is usually extreme by any standards. Unlike in air-breathing
jet engines, no atmospheric nitrogen is present to dilute and cool the combustion,
and the temperature can reach true stoichiometric. This, in combination with the
high pressures, means that the rate of heat conduction through the walls is very
high.

ROCKET NOZZLES

Typical temperatures (T) and pressures (p) and speeds (v) in a De Laval Nozzle
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The large bell or cone shaped expansion nozzle gives a rocket engine
its characteristic shape.

In rockets the hot gas produced in the combustion chamber is permitted

to escape from the combustion chamber through an opening (the "throat"), within a
high expansion-ratio 'de Laval nozzle'.

Provided sufficient pressure is provided to the nozzle (about 2.5-3x

above ambient pressure) the nozzle chokes and a supersonic jet is formed,
dramatically accelerating the gas, converting most of the thermal energy into
kinetic energy.

The exhaust speeds vary, depending on the expansion ratio the nozzle
is designed to give, but exhaust speeds as high as ten times the speed of sound of
sea level air are not uncommon.

Rocket thrust is caused by pressures acting in the combustion chamber

and nozzle. From Newton’s third law, equal and opposite pressures act on the
exhaust, and this accelerates it to high speeds.

About half of the rocket engine's thrust comes from the unbalanced
pressures inside the combustion chamber and the rest comes from the pressures
acting against the inside of the nozzle (see diagram). As the gas expands
(adiabatically) the pressure against the nozzle's walls forces the rocket engine in
one direction while accelerating the gas in the other.
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PROPELLANT EFFICIENCY
For a rocket engine to be propellant efficient, it is important that the
maximum pressures possible be created on the walls of the chamber and nozzle by
a specific amount of propellant; as this is the source of the thrust. This can be
achieved by all of:

• heating the propellant to as high a temperature as possible (using a high

energy fuel, containing hydrogen and carbon and sometimes metals such as
aluminum, or even using nuclear energy)
• using a low specific density gas (as hydrogen rich as possible)
• using propellants which are, or decompose to, simple molecules with few
degrees of freedom to maximize translational velocity

Since all of these things minimize the mass of the propellant used,
and since pressure is proportional to the mass of propellant present to be
accelerated as it pushes on the engine, and since from Newton's third law the
pressure that acts on the engine also reciprocally acts on the propellant, it turns out
that for any given engine the speed that the propellant leaves the chamber is
unaffected by the chamber pressure (although the thrust is proportional).

For aerodynamic reasons the flow goes sonic ("chokes") at the

narrowest part of the nozzle, the 'throat'. Since the speed of sound in gases
increases with the square root of temperature, the use of hot exhaust gas greatly
improves performance. By comparison, at room temperature the speed of sound in
air is about 340 m/s while the speed of sound in the hot gas of a rocket engine can
be over 1700 m/s; much of this performance is due to the higher temperature, but
additionally rocket propellants are chosen to be of low molecular mass, and this
also gives a higher velocity compared to air.

Nozzle efficiency is affected by operation in the atmosphere because

atmospheric pressure changes with altitude; but due to the supersonic speeds of the
gas exiting from a rocket engine, the pressure of the jet may be either below or
above ambient, and equilibrium between the two is not reached at all altitudes.
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BACK PRESSURE AND OPTIMAL EXPANSION

For optimal performance the pressure of the gas at the end of the
nozzle should just equal the ambient pressure: if the exhaust's pressure is lower
than the ambient pressure, then the vehicle will be slowed by the difference in
pressure between the top of the engine and the exit; on the other hand, if the
exhaust's pressure is higher, then exhaust pressure that could have been converted
into thrust is not converted, and energy is wasted.

To maintain this ideal of equality between the exhaust's exit pressure

and the ambient pressure, the diameter of the nozzle would need to increase with
altitude, giving the pressure a longer nozzle to act on (and reducing the exit
pressure and temperature). This increase is difficult to arrange in a lightweight
fashion, although is routinely done with other forms of jet engines. In rocketry a
lightweight compromise nozzle is generally used and some reduction in
atmospheric performance occurs when used at other than the 'design altitude' or
when throttled. To improve on this, various exotic nozzle designs such as the plug
nozzle, stepped nozzles, the expanding nozzle and the aero spike have been
proposed, each providing some way to adapt to changing ambient air pressure and
each allowing the gas to expand further against the nozzle, giving extra thrust at
higher altitudes.

THRUST VECTORING
Many engines require the overall thrust to change direction over the length of the
burn. A number of different ways to achieve this have been flown:

• The entire engine is mounted on a hinge or gimbal and any propellant feeds
reach the engine via low pressure flexible pipes or rotary couplings.
• Just the combustion chamber and nozzle is gimbled, the pumps are fixed,
and high pressure feeds attach to the engine
• multiple engines (often canted at slight angles) are deployed but throttled to
give the overall vector that is required, giving only a very small penalty
• fixed engines with vernier thrusters
• high temperature vanes held in the exhaust that can be tilted to deflect the jet

OVERALL ROCKET ENGINE PERFORMANCE

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Rocket technology can combine very high thrust (meganewtons), very

high exhaust speeds (around 10 times the speed of sound in air at sea level) and
very high thrust/weight ratios (>100) simultaneously as well as being able to
operate outside the atmosphere, and while permitting the use of low pressure and
hence lightweight tanks and structure.

Rockets can be further optimized to even more extreme performance

along one or more of these axes at the expense of the others.

SPECIFIC IMPULSE
The most important metric for the efficiency of a rocket engine is
impulse per unit of propellant, this is called specific impulse (usually written). This
is either measured as a speed (the effective exhaust velocity Ve in meters/second or
ft/s) or as a time (seconds). An engine that gives a large specific impulse is
normally highly desirable.

The specific impulse that can be achieved is primarily a function of the

propellant mix (and ultimately would limit the specific impulse), but practical
limits on chamber pressures and the nozzle expansion ratios reduce the
performance that can be achieved.

Typical performances of common propellants

Propellant mix Vacuum (seconds) Effective exhaust velocity (m/s)

liquid oxygen/ 455 4462
liquid hydrogen
liquid oxygen/ 358 3510
kerosene (RP-1)
nitrogen tetroxide/ 305 2993
hydrazine

All performances at a nozzle expansion ratio of 40

NET THRUST
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Below is an approximate equation for calculating the net thrust of a rocket engine:

where:

exhaust gas mass flow

effective exhaust velocity
actual jet velocity at nozzle exit plane
flow area at nozzle exit plane (or the plane where the jet leaves the
nozzle if separated flow)
static pressure at nozzle exit plane
ambient (or atmospheric) pressure

Since, unlike a jet engine, a conventional rocket motor lacks an air

intake, there is no 'ram drag' to deduct from the gross thrust. Consequently the net
thrust of a rocket motor is equal to the gross thrust (apart from static back
pressure).

The term represents the momentum thrust, which remains

constant at a given throttle setting, whereas the term represents the
pressure thrust term. At full throttle, the net thrust of a rocket motor improves
slightly with increasing altitude, because as atmospheric pressure decreases with
altitude, the pressure thrust term increases. At the surface of the Earth the pressure
thrust may be reduced by up to 30%,depending on the engine design. This
reduction drops roughly exponentially to zero with increasing altitude.

Maximum thrust for a rocket engine is achieved by maximizing the

momentum contribution of the equation without incurring penalties from over
expanding the exhaust. This occurs when Pe = Pamb. Since ambient pressure
changes with altitude, most rocket engines spend very little time operating at peak
efficiency.
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If the pressure of the exhaust jet varies from atmospheric pressure, nozzles can be
said to be (top to bottom):
Under expanded
Ambient
Over expanded
Grossly over expanded

If under or over expanded then loss of efficiency occurs, grossly over expanded
nozzles lose less efficiency, but can cause mechanical issues with the nozzle.
Rockets become progressively more under expanded as they gain altitude. Note
that almost all rocket engines will be momentarily grossly over expanded during
startup in an atmosphere.

VACUUM
Due to the specific impulse varying with pressure, a quantity that is
easy to compare and calculate with is useful. Because rockets choke at the throat,
and because the supersonic exhaust prevents external pressure influences travelling
upstream, it turns out that the pressure at the exit is ideally exactly proportional to
the propellant flow , provided the mixture ratios and combustion efficiencies are
maintained. It is thus quite usual to rearrange the above equation slightly:

and so define the vacuum to be: Vevac = Cfc *

Where:
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the speed of sound constant at the throat

the thrust coefficient constant of the nozzle (typically about 2)

And hence:

THROTTLING
Rockets can be throttled by controlling the propellant combustion rate
(usually measured in kg/s or lb/s). In liquid and hybrid rockets, the propellant flow
entering the chamber is controlled using valves, in solid rockets it is controlled by
changing the area of propellant that is burning and this can be designed into the
propellant grain (and hence cannot be controlled in real-time).

Rockets can usually be throttled down to an exit pressure of about one-

third of ambient pressure (often limited flow separation in nozzles) and up to a
maximum limit determined only by the mechanical strength of the engine.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Rocket energy efficiency as a function of vehicle speed divided by effective

exhaust speed

Rocket engine nozzles are surprisingly efficient heat engines for

generating a high speed jet, as a consequence of the high combustion temperature
and high compression ratio. Rocket nozzles give an excellent approximation to
adiabatic expansion which is a reversible process, and hence they give efficiencies
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which are very close to that of the Carnot cycle. Given the temperatures reached,
over 60% efficiency can be achieved with chemical rockets.

THRUST TO WEIGHT RATIO

Rockets, of all the jet engines, indeed of essentially all engines, have the
highest thrust to weight ratio. This is especially true for liquid rocket engines.

This high performance is due to the small volume of pressure vessels that
make up the engine- the pumps, pipes and combustion chambers involved. The
lack of inlet duct and the use of dense liquid propellant allows the pressurization
system to be small and lightweight, whereas duct engines have to deal with air
which has a density about one thousand times lower.

Of the liquid propellants used, density is worst for liquid hydrogen.

Although this propellant is marvelous in many ways, it has a very low density,
about one fourteenth that of water. This makes the turbo pumps and pipe work
larger and heavier, and this is reflected in the thrust-to-weight ratio of engines that
use it (for example the SSME) compared to those that do not (NK-33).

COOLING
For efficiency reasons, and because they physically can, rockets run with
combustion temperatures that can reach ~3500 K (~5800 °F)(~3227 °C).

Most other jet engines have gas turbines in the hot exhaust. Due to their
larger surface area, they are harder to cool and hence there is a need to run the
combustion processes at much lower temperatures, losing efficiency. In addition
duct engines use air as an oxidant, which contains 80% largely uncreative nitrogen,
which dilutes the reaction and lowers the temperatures. Rockets have none of these
inherent disadvantages.

Therefore in rockets temperatures employed are very often far higher than
the melting point of the nozzle and combustion chamber materials, two exceptions
are graphite and tungsten (~1200 K for copper), however both are subject to
oxidation if not protected. Indeed many construction materials can make perfectly
acceptable propellants in their own right. It is important that these materials be
prevented from combusting, melting or vaporizing to the point of failure. This is
sometimes somewhat facetiously termed an 'engine rich exhaust'. Materials
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technology could potentially place an upper limit on the exhaust temperature of

chemical rockets.

Alternatively, rockets may use more common construction materials

such as aluminum, steel, nickel or copper alloys and employ cooling systems that
prevent the construction material itself becoming too hot. Regenerative cooling,
where the propellant is passed through tubes around the combustion chamber or
nozzle, and other techniques, such as curtain cooling or film cooling, are employed
to give longer nozzle and chamber life. These techniques ensure that a gaseous
thermal boundary layer touching the material is kept below the temperature which
would cause the material to catastrophically fail.

In rockets, the heat fluxes that can pass through the wall are among the
highest in engineering, fluxes are generally in the range of 1-200 MW/m^2. The
strongest heat fluxes are found at the throat, which often sees twice that found in
the associated chamber and nozzle. This is due to the combination of high speeds
(which gives a very thin boundary layer), and although lower than the chamber, the
high temperatures seen there. (See rocket nozzles above for temperatures in
nozzle).

In rockets the coolant methods include:

1. uncooled (used for short runs mainly during testing)

2. ablative walls (walls are lined with a material that is continuously vaporized
and carried away).
3. radioactive cooling (the chamber becomes almost white hot and radiates the
heat away)
4. dump cooling (a propellant, usually hydrogen, is passed around the chamber
and dumped)
5. regenerative cooling (liquid rockets use the fuel, or occasionally the
oxidizer, to cool the chamber via a cooling jacket before being injected)
6. curtain cooling (propellant injection is arranged so the temperature of the
gases is cooler at the walls)
7. film cooling (surfaces are wetted with liquid propellant, which cools as it
evaporates)

MECHANICAL ISSUES
Rocket combustion chambers are normally operated at fairly high
pressure, typically 10-200 bar (1 to 20 MPa, 150-3000 psi). When operated within
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significant atmospheric pressure, higher combustion chamber pressures give better

performance by permitting a larger and more efficient nozzle to be fitted without it
being grossly over expanded.

However, these high pressures cause the outermost part of the chamber
to be under very large hoop stresses – rocket engines are pressure vessels.

Worse, due to the high temperatures created in rocket engines the

materials used tend to have a significantly lowered working tensile strength.

In addition, significant temperature gradients are set up in the walls of

the chamber and nozzle, these cause differential expansion of the inner liner that
create internal stresses.

ACOUSTIC ISSUES
In addition, the extreme vibration and acoustic environment inside a
rocket motor commonly result in peak stresses well above mean values, especially
in the presence of organ pipe-like resonances and gas turbulence.

COMBUSTION INSTABILITIES
The combustion may display undesired instabilities, of sudden or
periodic nature. The pressure in the injection chamber may increase until the
propellant flow through the injector plate decreases; a moment later the pressure
drops and the flow increases, injecting more propellant in the combustion chamber
which burns a moment later, and again increases the chamber pressure, repeating
the cycle. This may lead to high-amplitude pressure oscillations, often in ultrasonic
range, which may damage the motor. Oscillations of ±200 psi at 25 kHz were the
cause of failures of early versions of the Titan II missile second stage engines. The
other failure mode is a deflagration to detonation transition; the supersonic
pressure wave formed in the combustion chamber may destroy the engine.

Three different types of combustion instabilities occur:

CHUGGING
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This is a low frequency oscillation at a few Hertz in chamber pressure

usually caused by pressure variations in feed lines due to variations in acceleration
of the vehicle. This can cause cyclic variation in thrust, and the effects can vary
from merely annoying to actually damaging the payload or vehicle. Chugging can
be minimized by using gas-filled damping tubes on feed lines of high density
propellants.

BUZZING

This can be caused due to insufficient pressure drop across the injectors.
It generally is mostly annoying, rather than being damaging. However, in extreme
cases combustion can end up being forced backwards through the injectors – this
can cause explosions with monopropellants.

SCREECHING

This is the most immediately damaging, and the hardest to control. It is

due to acoustics within the combustion chamber that often couples to the chemical
combustion processes that are the primary drivers of the energy release, and can
lead to unstable resonant "screeching" that commonly leads to catastrophic failure
due to thinning of the insulating thermal boundary layer. Such effects are very
difficult to predict analytically during the design process, and have usually been
addressed by expensive, time consuming and extensive testing, combined with trial
and error remedial correction measures.

EXHAUST NOISE
For all but the very smallest sizes, rocket exhaust compared to other
engines is generally very noisy. As the hypersonic exhaust mixes with the ambient
air, shock waves are formed. The Space Shuttle generates over 200 dB(A) of noise
around its base.

The Saturn V launch was detectable on seismometers a considerable

distance from the launch site. The sound intensity from the shock waves generated
depends on the size of the rocket and on the exhaust velocity. Such shock waves
seem to account for the characteristic crackling and popping sounds produced by
large rocket engines when heard live. These noise peaks typically overload
microphones and audio electronics, and so are generally weakened or entirely
absent in recorded or broadcast audio reproductions. For large rockets at close
range, the acoustic effects could actually kill.
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TESTING
Rocket engines are usually statically tested at a test facility before being
put into production. For high altitude engines, either a shorter nozzle must be used,
or the rocket must be tested in a large vacuum chamber.

SAFETY
Rockets have a reputation for unreliability and danger; especially
catastrophic failures. Contrary to this reputation, carefully designed rockets can be
made arbitrarily reliable. In military use, rockets are not unreliable. However, one
of the main non-military uses of rockets is for orbital launch. In this application,
the premium is on minimum weight, and it is difficult to achieve high reliability
and low weight simultaneously. In addition, if the number of flights launched is
low, there is a very high chance of a design, operations or manufacturing error
causing destruction of the vehicle. Essentially all launch vehicles are test vehicles
by normal aerospace standards (as of 2006).

The X-15 rocket plane achieved a 0.5% failure rate, with a single
catastrophic failure during ground test, and the SSME has managed to avoid
catastrophic failures in over 350 engine-flights.

CHEMISTRY
Rocket propellants require a high specific energy (energy per unit mass),
because ideally all the reaction energy appears as kinetic energy of the exhaust
gases, and exhaust velocity is the single most important performance parameter of
an engine, on which vehicle performance depends.

Aside from inevitable losses and imperfections in the engine, incomplete

combustion, etc., after specific reaction energy, the main theoretical limit reducing
the exhaust velocity obtained is that, according to the laws of thermodynamics, a
fraction of the chemical energy may go into rotation of the exhaust molecules,
where it is unavailable for producing thrust. Monatomic gases like helium have
only three degrees of freedom, corresponding to the three dimensions of space,
{x,y,z}, and only such spherically symmetric molecules escape this kind of loss. A
diatomic molecule like H2 can rotate about either of the two axes perpendicular to
the one joining the two atoms, and as the equipartition law of statistical mechanics
demands that the available thermal energy be divided equally among the degrees of
freedom, for such a gas in thermal equilibrium 3/5 of the energy can go into
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unidirectional motion, and 2/5 into rotation. A triatomic molecule like water has
six degrees of freedom, so the energy is divided equally among rotational and
translational degrees of freedom. For most chemical reactions the latter situation is
the case. This issue is traditionally described in terms of the ratio, gamma, of the
specific heat of the gas at constant volume to that at constant pressure. The
rotational energy loss is largely recovered in practice if the expansion nozzle is
large enough to allow the gases to expand and cool sufficiently, the function of the
nozzle being to convert the random thermal motions of the molecules in the
combustion chamber into the unidirectional translation that produces thrust. As
long as the exhaust gas remains in equilibrium as it expands, the initial rotational
energy will be largely returned to translation in the nozzle.

Computer programs that predict the performance of propellants in rocket

engines are available.

IGNITION
With liquid and hybrid rockets, immediate ignition of the propellant(s) as
they first enter the combustion chamber is essential.

With liquid propellants (but not gaseous), failure to ignite within

milliseconds usually causes too much liquid propellant to be within the chamber,
and if/when ignition occurs the amount of hot gas created will often exceed the
maximum design pressure of the chamber. The pressure vessel will often fail
catastrophically. This is sometimes called a hard start.

Ignition can be achieved by a number of different methods; a pyrotechnic

charge can be used, a plasma torch can be used, or electric spark plugs may be
employed. Some fuel/oxidizer combinations ignite on contact (hypergolic), and
non-hypergolic fuels can be "chemically ignited" by priming the fuel lines with
hypergolic propellants (popular in Russian engines).

Gaseous propellants generally will not cause hard starts, with rockets the total
injector area is less than the throat thus the chamber pressure tends to ambient prior
to ignition and high pressures cannot form even if the entire chamber is full of
flammable gas at ignition.

Solid propellants are usually ignited with one-shot pyrotechnic devices.

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Once ignited, rocket chambers are self sustaining and igniters are not
needed. Indeed chambers often spontaneously reignite if they are restarted after
being shut down for a few seconds. However, when cooled, many rockets cannot
be restarted without at least minor maintenance, such as replacement of the
pyrotechnic igniter.

PLUME PHYSICS

Armadillo aerospace's quad vehicle showing visible banding (shock diamonds) in

the exhaust plume

Rocket plume varies depending on the rocket engine, design altitude, altitude,
thrust and other factors.

Carbon rich exhausts from kerosene fuels are often orange in colour due
to the black body radiation of the unburned particles, in addition to the blue Swan
bands. Peroxide oxidizer based rockets and hydrogen rocket plumes contain largely
steam and are nearly invisible to the naked eye but shine brightly in the ultraviolet
and infrared. Plumes from solid rockets can be highly visible as the propellant
frequently contains metals such as elemental aluminum which burns with a orange-
white flame and adds energy to the combustion process.

Some exhausts, notably alcohol fuelled rockets, can show visible shock diamonds.
These are due to cyclic variations in the plume pressure relative to ambient
creating shock waves that form 'mach disks'.

The shape of the plume varies from the design altitude, at high altitude
all rockets are grossly under-expanded, and a quite small percentage of exhaust
gases actually end up expanding forwards.
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HISTORY OF ROCKET ENGINES

According to the writings of the Roman Aulus Gellius, in c. 400 BC, a
Greek Pythagorean named Archytas, propelled a wooden bird along wires using
steam. However, it would not appear to have been powerful enough to take off
under its own thrust.

The aeolipile described in the first century BC (often known as Hero's

engine) essentially consists of a steam rocket on a bearing. It was created almost
two millennia before the Industrial Revolution but the principles behind it were not
well understood, and its full potential was not realized for a millennium.

The availability of black powder to propel projectiles was a precursor to

the development of the first solid rocket. Ninth Century Chinese Taoist alchemists
discovered black powder in a search for the Elixir of life; this accidental discovery
led to fire arrows which were the first rocket engines to leave the ground.

Rocket engines were also brought in use by Tippu Sultan, The king of
Mysore. These rockets could be of various sizes, but usually consisted of a tube of
soft hammered iron about 8" long and 1½ - 3" diameter, closed at one end and
strapped to a shaft of bamboo about 4 ft. long. The iron tube acted as a combustion
chamber and contained well packed black powder propellant. A rocket carrying
about one pound of powder could travel almost 1,000 yards. These 'rockets', fitted
with swords used to travel long distance, several meters above in air before coming
down with swords edges facing the enemy. These rockets were used against British
empire very effectively.

Slow development of this technology continued up to the later 20th

Century, when the writings of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky first talked about liquid
fuelled rocket engines.

These independently became a reality thanks to Robert Goddard.

Goddard also used a De Laval nozzle for the first time on a rocket, doubling the
thrust and multiplying up the efficiency by several times.

During the late 1930s, German scientists, such as Wernher von Braun
and Hellmuth Walter, investigated installing liquid-fuelled rockets in aircraft
(Heinkel He 112, He 111, He 176 and Messerschmitt Me 163).
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The turbo pump was first employed by German scientists in WWII. At

this time cooling the nozzle was often problematic, and the V2 ballistic missile
used dilute alcohol for the fuel, which reduced the combustion temperature
somewhat.

Staged combustion (Замкнутая схема) was first proposed by Alexey

Isaev in 1949. The first staged combustion engine was the S1.5400 used in the
Soviet planetary rocket, designed by Melnikov, a former assistant to Isaev. About
the same time (1959), Nikolai Kuznetsov began work on the closed cycle engine
NK-9 for Korolev's orbital ICBM, GR-1. Kuznetsov later evolved that design into
the NK-15 and NK-33 engines for the unsuccessful Lunar N1 rocket.

In the West, the first laboratory staged-combustion test engine was built
in Germany in 1963, by Ludwig Boelkow.

Hydrogen peroxide / kerosene fuelled engines such as the British

Gamma of the 1950s used a closed-cycle process (arguably not staged combustion,
but that's mostly a question of semantics) by catalytically decomposing the
peroxide to drive turbines before combustion with the kerosene in the combustion
chamber proper. This gave the efficiency advantages of staged combustion, whilst
avoiding the major engineering problems.

Liquid hydrogen engines were first successfully developed in America,

the RL-10 engine first flew in 1962. Hydrogen engines were used as part of the
Project Apollo; the liquid hydrogen fuel giving a rather lower stage mass and thus
reducing the overall size and cost of the vehicle.

The Space Shuttle's SSME is the highest ground-launched specific

impulse rocket engine to fly.

CONCLUSION
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New engine designs are trying to find ways to accelerate ions or atomic
particles to extremely high speeds to create thrust more efficiently. NASA's Deep
Space-1 spacecraft was the first to use ion engines for propulsion.

A rocket engine is throwing mass in one direction and benefiting from

the reaction that occurs in the other direction as a result. This concept of "throwing
mass and benefiting from the reaction" can be hard to grasp at first, because that
does not seem to be what is happening. Rocket engines seem to be about flames
and noise and pressure, not "throwing things."

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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 Design of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines

by Huzel and Huang

 The First Jet Pilot

by Warsitz and Lutz

 History of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines

by George Sutton

 http://en.wikipedia.org

 http://www.howstuffworks.com

 http://books.google.com