You could get a similar mode of failure with a liquid if the deluge
system failed right on liftoff. Not that easy for most rockets to sit
back down on the pad unplanned. Plus the reflected acoustics can be
loud enough without the deluge that it can damage the engines, or the
payload.
So a nice tall tower, which doesn't have any failure modes once the
flow is started other than it running out of water or something
toppling it over, is a pretty decent way to go. Compared to extremely
large pumps that are used optimistically a dozen or so times a year,
which anyone who works with rotating equipment and water knows how
much fun something is when it sits most of its life. A pump that can
fully use a 48" pipe to begin with is a rather large monster.
On Sat, May 14, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Lars Osborne <lars.osborne@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Good thing NASA Kennedy doesn't launch any large solid rockets.
Thanks,
Lars Osborne
On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 7:22 PM, Robert Steinke <robert.steinke@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
With solid rockets you have the failure mode where your water deluge pump
breaks, but you can't turn the rocket off.
On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 7:15 PM, Dave McMillan <skyefire@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 5/11/2016 8:37 PM, Jake Anderson wrote:
Running a $500 pump for a few hours to fill a lump of concrete is a bunch
more reliable and probably cheaper than building a pump to move that same
amount of water in 50 seconds ;->
Gravity *is* pretty fail-safe. :)