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LOX/Methane Regeneratively-Cooled Rocket Engine Development
Completed
TRL 5 (started at 3, targeting 5)
Description
The purpose of this project is to advance the technologies required to build a subcritical regeneratively cooled liquid oxygen/methane rocket combustion chamber for an exploration-class vehicle that is deep throttling and operated on pressure-fed propellants. This project will involve building and testing low-cost combustion chambers, developing and validating an analytical tool to predict engine cooling circuit performance, and finally designing and building a full scale regen combustion chamber which will be tested for thermal steady state performance. Design, build, and test a 5,000 lbf thrust regeneratively cooled combustion chamber at JSC for a low pressure liquid oxygen/methane engine. The engine demonstrates its effectiveness by continuous steady state operation without catastrophic damage to the combustion chamber. This project will advance in three phases: 1) The addition of a regeneratively cooled test section to an existing pressure fed LOX/Methane engine. This "partial regen" engine will be hot fire tested and thereby used to validate a multiphase regen cooling model. 2) The development of a tube forming technique to construct a low cost full-size regeneratively cooled combustion chamber. 3) Using the results of #1 and 2, create a full scale regeneratively cooled combustion chamber (open loop cooling) for an existing 5,000 lbf subcritical liquid oxygen/methane rocket engine with variable chamber heat load capability. This full scale engine will be hot fire tested to demonstrate performance.
Benefits
Regen-cooled main engine technology will be used immediately on the Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Project Morpheus vertical test bed. This technology will be useful to any commercial or government user of advanced liquid oxygen/methane rocket engines or subcritical methane heat exchangers. Generally, the high performance of this type of engine will enable hard-to-reach mission goals, expanding the possibilities of exploration mission design. From a narrower perspective, the results of this project will be applicable to all future high performance liquid oxygen/methane engine development programs.
Details
| Technology area | Propulsion Systems > Chemical Space Propulsion > Cryogenic Propulsion |
| Program | Center Innovation Fund: JSC CIF (JSC CIF) |
| Lead organization | Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX |
| Start date | 2011-11-01 |
| End date | 2014-09-01 |
Project contacts
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