[AR] Re: Dual-thrust solid motors: their history?

  • From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2021 19:14:07 -0500 (EST)

On Fri, 26 Feb 2021, Troy Prideaux wrote:

It depends a lot on what altitude the sustainer is operating at. If the average operating altitude of the booster is say 5000ft (= 0.83atm) and the average operating altitude of the sustainer is 22,500ft (=0.41atm) then you can theoretically operate your chamber at half the pressure during sustainer operation at no loss of thrust coefficient...

Unfortunately, Hawk had low-level capability, i.e. quite possible for all of both burns to be at 1atm. (Although in the low-altitude case, where it didn't have to climb maybe 50,000ft at a steep angle, it might have been able to accept some performance loss.)

Henry

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