[AR] Re: Black Arrow (was Re: Hypothetical Lox cooling)

  • From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2020 00:31:51 -0400 (EDT)

On Fri, 23 Oct 2020, Peter Fairbrother wrote:

...what the first stage of the only orbital launch looks like now...

From the photo it looks like the engine is copper, but aiui Black Arrow used peroxide regen cooling - earlier (below) you said that use of peroxide as coolant meant that you can't use copper for the chamber. Are the copper bits the extensions you mentioned?

No, the extensions were only on the second stage. I suspect the vaguely coppery color is just desert dust that hasn't been thoroughly cleaned out of the tube-wall construction.

Do you know what the chambers were made of?

Tube-wall construction using stainless of some type. The one oddity was that they were welded instead of brazed, because brazing alloy couldn't be exposed to peroxide in the injector, and for some reason they weren't entirely comfortable with using two different joining methods in different parts of the chamber.

Henry

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