Steve is on the list, but he invented a pistonless pump.
-george
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 7, 2023, at 7:50 AM, willsrw@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
The guy who invented a piston pump was Dr Steve Harrington of Flometrics. When I knew him, he also taught at UCSD & San Diego State. Steve published a few AIAA papers on the pump.
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of roxanna Mason
Sent: Wednesday, 5 April, 2023 7:41 PM
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AR] Re: [AR] Re: [AR] piston pumps and peroxide (was Re: [AR] “Transitioning...)
Is the question about a piston pump?
A guy invented it in a rocket club somewhere in southern CA about 10 years ago and test fired it with a LOx/Kerosene TCA at FAR.
It worked, just bulky.
Ken
On Wed, Apr 5, 2023 at 4:36 PM George Herbert <george.herbert@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Apr 5, 2023, at 4:17 PM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 4 Apr 2023, Alexander Mikhailov wrote:
>>> (The LLNL piston-pump guys, who switched from hydrazine to peroxide for their experimental work, were surprised and impressed by just how much easier it made everything -- for example, they could do quick tests on the lab bench, instead of having to go out to a hazmat test site every time.)
>>
>> I'm researching that piston pump project, and can't find anything from
>> LLNL after approx. 2005 :( . Did they stop working on that?
>
> Yeah, I don't recall seeing anything new from them in a long time. Most likely, they simply ran out of funding, given the lack of funded applications for the technology, and the general impoverishment of LLNL after the end of the Cold War.
I don’t recall exactly when but Jordin left LLNL somewhere in there and I think that there was no further piston pump work afterwards. He wasn’t the only one on it for sure, but I think lack of funds and team breaking up were interrelated.
My impression of that could be wrong, but I don’t know who we could ask now to try and find out.
-george