[AR] Re: helium tank submerged in LOX \ Re: Re: SpaceX failure update
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 13:59:42 -0500 (EST)
On Tue, 8 Nov 2016, Jake Anderson wrote:
That's just a heat exchanger by another name, alas. Building a good heat
exchanger that will break in the middle on command is likely to be hard...
It would be difficult to make one that works "well" but how well would it
need to actually work?
It needs to suck out all, or almost all, of the heat being transferred in
by air flow around the tank and conduction through the structure (the
former usually being the big issue). The less well it works, the bigger
it needs to be, and the larger the area of the tank it needs to cover, to
achieve that. Problems with things like icing and achieving an adequate
fit are likely to grow with size, so size does matter.
If NASA aren't happy about lox loading with crew aboard would they be ok
with pumping it in and out instead?
Maybe if the level changed only a little. They probably wouldn't be happy
with having it going up and down a lot.
I suppose all that's needed for the circulate cold lox option would be
one extra valve and a coupling off the main lox line so it'd be simpler
in that regard. Actually they can already defuel the rocket so they must
already have that plumbing in place and would just need GSE
modifications to allow it?
The problem is that to avoid stratification, you really want to take the
outflow from the *top* of the liquid, or near the top, while all the
liquid plumbing usually goes to the bottom. It probably would need either
a pipe run up the side, or a separate umbilical up at the top.
Henry
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