Reply to post: Re: Depressing

Ex-Soviet engines fingered after Antares ROCKET launch BLAST

Dave 32
Mushroom

Re: Depressing

Designing rocket engines is hard. VERY hard. You have to mix very a very volatile fuel and oxidizer in the combustion chamber thoroughly to ensure complete combustion. And, you have to do this at some rather incredible temperatures, temperatures which are very close to the melting point of even the most refractory materials. And, these refractory materials have to withstand some fairly high pressures, and are subjected to extreme temperature changes. Plus, the chamber material has to withstand both fuel and oxidizer materials without reacting to either one. Now, couple this design with the fact that the fluid dynamics of rocket chamber combustion isn't a well understood science (definitely not well enough to adequately computer model), and the fact that instabilities can build up such that the combustion process goes non-linear and starts to pulse or vibrate, which can stress those refractory materials well beyond their limits, and the end result is that it's VERY hard to design a new rocket engine. Furthermore, rocket engine designs don't necessarily scale very well, which means that the only way to design a new rocket engine is to build a full size model and empirically test it. But, even static testing can't try all of the conditions that a rocket engine will encounter during its flight. So, it's not too surprising that even a tried and proven 50 year old design may encounter some conditions which cause it to go BOOM in a most unpleasant way. :-/ Rocket science is HARD.

Dave

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