I would say the stand first.
On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 3:53 PM Jonathan Adams <jonadams2002@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Thank you very much!
It sounds like you've had a wild ride in the rocket engine business, Ken.
On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 8:34 AM roxanna Mason <rocketmaster.ken@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Jon, I was in your position back in the late 60's. I built my engines
first then the stand.
I made my first liquid biprop engine from a CO2 cylinder that is used in
BB guns. The stand came afterwards.
My 2nd engine I built in my high school machine shop class. Then came the
stand.
MMy 3rd engine was an LR-101 TCA w/o injector I bought at a surplus store
NE of Sacramento.
I built an injector for it in the same high school class. Then came the
stand.
Etc, etc. for the next 50 years until I got to work on the F-1 rocket
engine test stands at Edwards AFB. I lived my dream, I hope you do as well.
Good luck with Blessings to you,
Ken
On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 2:48 PM Jonathan Adams <jonadams2002@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
For those of you with experience building and firing a liquid-propellant
rocket engine, plus the test stand and tanks, which should come first in
design and construction - the engine or the stand?
Construction, and spending the money to truly get started seems like the
point of no return (without losing money, at least), so my team wanted to
do this bit right.
The engine seems like it would be the hard part, so building that first
would get it out of the way. Beyond that, the test stand should be much
easier to build (or so we think).
But then there's also the issue that building the engine before you have
a test stand (that you know can support it) might be putting the cart
before the horse. It could also lead to issues where we find that the test
stand can't match what we designed the engine for.
If anyone can tell me from experience what the best way to go about this
would be, my team and I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks.