I say it's nickel, good heat transfer,strength and oxidation resistance.
K
On Sun, Oct 25, 2020 at 9:32 PM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
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