Browse Topic: Spacecraft fuel
Researchers have used the ancient Japanese art of paper folding to possibly solve a key challenge for outer space travel: how to store and move fuel to rocket engines. They developed an origami-inspired, folded plastic fuel bladder that doesn’t crack at super-cold temperatures and could someday be used to store and pump fuel.
A concept was evaluated of using nitrous oxide as (1) a monopropellant in thrusters for space suits and spacecraft and (2) a source of breathable gas inside space suits and spacecraft, both by exploiting the controlled decomposition of N2O into N2 and O2. Relative to one prior monopropellant hydrazine, N2O is much less toxic, yet offers comparable performance. N2O can be stored safely as a liquid at room temperature and unlike another prior monopropellant hydrogen peroxide does not decompose spontaneously. A prototype N2O-based thruster has been demonstrated. It has also been proposed to harness N2O-based thrusters for generating electric power and to use the N2 + O2 decomposition product as a breathable gas. Because of the high performance, safety, and ease of handling of N2O, it can be expected to be economically attractive to equip future spacecraft and space suits with N2O-based thrusters and breathable-gas systems.
An acousto-optic cryogenic flow sensor (CFS) determines mass flow of cryogens for spacecraft propellant management. The CFS operates unobtrusively in a high-pressure, high-flowrate cryogenic environment to provide measurements for fluid quality as well as mass flow rate. Experimental hardware uses an optical “plane-of-light” (POL) to detect the onset of two-phase flow, and the presence of particles in the flow of water.
Like the electrical-resistance heaters used heretofore for such testing, the dielectric heaters would be inserted in the reactors in place of nuclear fuel rods. A typical heater according to the proposal would consist of a rod of lossy dielectric material sized and shaped like a fuel rod and containing an electrically conductive rod along its center line. Exploiting the dielectric loss mechanism that is usually considered a nuisance in other applications, an RF signal, typically at a frequency =50 MHz and an amplitude between 2 and 5 kV, would be applied to the central conductor to heat the dielectric material. The main advantage of the proposal is that the wiring needed for the RF dielectric heating would be simpler and easier to fabricate than is the wiring needed for resistance heating. In some applications, it might be possible to eliminate all heater wiring and, instead, beam the RF heating power into the dielectric rods from external antennas.
A brief report summarizes an investigation of less-toxic alternatives to toxic monopropellant fluids used in launch vehicles, upper stages, and spacecraft propulsion. The toxic fluids in question are (1) hydrazine and its derivatives, used, variously, as fuels or by themselves as catalytically decomposable monopropellants; and (2) nitrogen dioxide, used as an oxidizer for such fuels.
A combination of procedure and equipment for loading liquid hydrazine into a spacecraft fuel tank that contains a diaphragm or bladder would be modified, according to a proposal. The purpose of the modifications is to enable fueling technicians to work safely, during all but a small part of the loading process, in less-restrictive protective attire.
A paper suggests the development of a hybrid rocket engine and associated equipment for returning a sample of material from Mars at relatively low cost. In a hybrid rocket engine, a solid fuel is burned by use of a liquid or gaseous oxidizer, the flow of which can be throttled to control the engine. Unlike conventional solid rocket propellants, a solid rocket fuel can be made relatively inert in the absence of the oxidizer and therefore presents little hazard of explosion or inadvertent ignition. Unlike conventional (and relatively expensive) liquid rocket propellants, a solid rocket fuel is not corrosive or susceptible to leakage. The solid fuel in the proposed system would be in granular form, packed into the rocket motor. Oxygen or another suitable oxidizer could be transported from Earth together with this solid fuel. Alternatively, oxygen could be generated from CO2 in the Martian atmosphere by use of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) equipment. Inasmuch as ISRU is not yet a mature technological discipline, some research on ISRU would be necessary to estimate the reduction in cost achieved by not having to carry the oxidizer to Mars.
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