🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C01vE9.HsF.1@cs.cmu.edu>, 0004244402@mcimail.com (Karl Dishaw) writes:
|> I dug into my notes from Aero/Astro project lab, we tried to make a 
|> fuel feeder for an aluminum/oxygen rocket:
|> 
|> Isp = 118 sec (after accounting for loss due to solid particles)
|> Must run oxidizer-rich since Al2O3 is a solid.
|> Main hazard--oxygen getting into Al storage tank.
|> 
|> I'd love to see some info on the Wickman project.  The Isp is too low to 
|> be really useful, but it would be great for circularizing orbits on mass 
|> driver-launched payloads, or maybe cheap transport on the lunar 
|> surface.

Thanks for the info.

My thoughts were along the line of constructing a hollow cylinder of
powdered aluminum, into which you would pump LOX at a controlled rate.
The Aluminum particles might need to be held in some sort of a matrix
material, both to keep them in place, and to prevent the buildup of an 
Aluminum Oxide casing.  I wonder what the effective Isp of Aluminum laced
epoxy is?

I seem to remember a somewhat similar design which pumps LOX into a tube of 
rubber?  To stop the "engine", stop the flow of LOX.

Obviously such a design would only be useful in a vacuum, and is probably
no more reusable than an SRB.

John Reynolds