[AR] Re: APCP properties, was Re: Re: starship abort?

  • From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2023 11:36:17 -0400 (EDT)

On Fri, 28 Apr 2023, Ben Brockert wrote:

The “Deutsches Museum Flugwerft Schleißheim” outside Munich is mostly an aircraft museum, but has a few interesting rocket parts at the very end. One is an Ariane 5 motor casing that has been cross sectioned, it was the 7 segment version.

The 7-segment and 3-segment versions are one and the same -- as with the Shuttle SRBs, the number of *casing* segments and the number of *fuel* segments are different, because the casing segments are put together into larger subassemblies before the fuel is cast into them. For Ariane it's 7 casing segments and 3 fuel segments, in I think a 3+3+1 pattern. (It helps that most of the fuel casting for the Ariane boosters is done at the launch site, so the big triple segments don't have to travel far.)

 They also have a nearly complete Europa... You definitely get the feeling that the Blue Streak first stage builders got a real good look at an Atlas at some point. 

As others have noted, they did -- there was explicit licensing of both Convair's Atlas technology and the Rocketdyne engine technology. They did some odd things with it, e.g. one purely pressure-stiffened tank and one with more conventional structure (I've never seen that explained).

Blue Streak did a nearly-flawless job as Europa's first stage; unfortunately the upper stages weren't nearly as well-behaved.

Henry

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