[AR] Re: "Direct" Hydrogen Peroxide engines ... Re: Issues with operating at low chamber pressure
- From: Ben Brockert <wikkit@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2016 14:16:13 -0400
On Tuesday, September 6, 2016, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
They reportedly have a separate TEA/TEB injection system for ignition;
frozen igniter plumbing was blamed for the 2013 second-stage restart
failure.
Making more fire is easy, the larger challenge is spinning up the pumps
again. I don't know if it's still true on the Falcon 9.2, but on the
earlier Falcon 9 the pumps were spun up by ground-based helium for launch.
Based on the amount of helium onboard it may be that they do the same for
in-air restart. If, instead, they had developed electric pumps to supply
the gas generators with enough propellant pressure to boot the engines, I
wonder if they would have lost a rocket to helium tank system failure.
Unrelated, but I bet they've gone through the same exercise as XCOR and
Masten, trying to decide if it's worth pumping the contaminated helium out
of an empty landed rocket for reuse.
Ben
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