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Old 02-20-2016, 12:03 PM
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blackshire blackshire is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
Default Battery-powered rockets

Hello All,

Here is a new "smallsat" launch vehicle technology that could eventually find its way into hobby rocketry, making liquid bi-propellant powered models practical. Rocket Lab Ltd.'s "Electron" launch vehicle will use the Rutherford engine, a 3D printed LOX/kerosene rocket engine whose fuel and oxidizer pumps use brushless DC electric motors powered by lithium-polymer batteries (see: http://www.b14643.de/Spacerockets_1...ption/Frame.htm ). The announcement regarding this development (which is accompanied by a photograph of a Rutherford engine firing on a static test stand, as shown on Norbert Brugge's above-linked website) says:
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April, 2015
Rocket Lab unveiled the Rutherford engine, revealing that the Electron launch system is the world’s first battery-powered rocket. Unlike traditional propulsion cycles based on complex and expensive gas generators, the 4,600 lbf (20.51 kN) Rutherford adopts an entirely new electric propulsion cycle, making use of high-performance brushless DC electric motors and lithium-polymer batteries to drive its turbopumps. It is manufactured by three-dimensional, additive-manufacturing techniques that include laser and electron-beam sintering, with Inconel and titanium powder as the feed stock.
Rutherford is the first oxygen/hydrocarbon engine to use 3D printing for all primary components including its engine chamber, injector, pumps and main propellant valves.
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First piston-pump powered liquid propellant rockets, and now battery-powered rockets! We live in amazing technological times...
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Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
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