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TR-106
The TR-106 or low-cost pintle engine (LCPE) was a developmental rocket engine designed by TRW Inc., TRW under the Space Launch Initiative to reduce the cost of Launch service provider, launch services and space flight. Operating on LOX/LH2 the engine had a thrust of 2892 kN, or 650,000 pounds, making it one of the most powerful engines ever constructed. Overview The goal of the development was to produce a large, low-cost, easy-to-manufacture booster engine. The design used a single element coaxial pintle injector, a robust type of injector. It also used ablative cooling of the combustion chamber and nozzle instead of the more costly to manufacture regenerative cooling. The use of the pintle injector allows the engine thrust to be widely Throttleable rocket engine, throttleable, as was the case for the lunar module descent engine. Status Tom Mueller was a lead engineer for development of the LCPE, a 650,000 lbf thrust LOX/LH2 engine. In the summer of 2000, this LCPE wa ...
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Space Launch Initiative
The Space Launch Initiative (SLI) was a NASA and U.S. Department of Defense joint research and technology project to determine the requirements to meet all the nation's hypersonics, space launch and space technology needs. It was also known as the "2nd Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) program.". The program began with the award of RLV study contracts in 2000. The primary goal of the research was to increase safety and reliability and to reduce overall costs associated with building, flying and maintaining the nation's next generation of space launch vehicles. NASA anticipated that these advances would revitalize the nation's space transportation capabilities, and dramatically improve NASA's ability to conduct science and exploration missions in space. This program was evolved into the Orbital Space Plane Program and the Next Generation Launch Technology program in November 2002. In 2004 NASA moved on to the Constellation Program, part of the Vision for Space Exploration, a ...
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Tom Mueller
Thomas John Mueller is an American aerospace engineer and rocket engine designer. He was employee No.1 of SpaceX and is the founder and now CEO of Impulse Space. Mueller is best known for his engineering work on the Merlin, Draco, Super Draco and TR-106 rocket engines. He is considered one of the world's leading spacecraft propulsion experts and holds several United States patents for propulsion technology. Early life and education Mueller was born in St. Maries, Idaho. His father was a logger and wanted Mueller to be one as well. Mueller compares his story to that of Homer Hickam, growing up in a hard-working family and going off to be an engineer instead of following in his father's footsteps. As a kid, he would build and fly Estes model rockets. He continued to experiment with rockets, even building one out of his father's oxy-acetylene welder and discovering adding water would produce more thrust. Mueller eventually became a logger, working four summers to pay his w ...
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Pintle Injector
The pintle injector is a type of propellant injector for a bipropellant rocket engine. Like any other injector, its purpose is to ensure appropriate flow rate and intermixing of the propellants as they are forcibly injected under high pressure into the Rocket engine#Combustion chamber, combustion chamber, so that an efficient and controlled combustion process can happen. A pintle-based rocket engine can have a greater throttling range than one based on regular injectors, and will very rarely present acoustic combustion instabilities, because a pintle injector tends to create a self-stabilizing flow pattern. Therefore, pintle-based engines are specially suitable for applications that require deep, fast, and safe throttling, such as Lander (spacecraft), landers. Pintle injectors began as early laboratory experimental apparatuses, used by Caltech's JPL, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the mid-1950s, to study the mixing and combustion reaction times of hypergolic propellant, hypergolic ...
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TR-107
The TR-107 was a developmental rocket engine designed in 2002 by Northrop Grumman for the NASA and DoD-funded Space Launch Initiative (SLI). Operating on LOX/RP-1, the engine was throttleable and had a thrust of at a chamber pressure of , making it one of the most powerful engines ever constructed. History The TR-107 was developed by TRW following the successful conclusion of the development program for the TR-106 engine, a similar throttleable engine of about half the thrust burning LOX/LH2 instead of LOX / RP-1. Tom Mueller, then VP of Propulsion Development at Northrop, was project manager for both the TR-106 and TR-107 engines. In 2002, Mueller co-founded SpaceX with Elon Musk and became the VP of propulsion after cancellation of the SLI program. Status Northrop Grumman development of the ''TR-107'' engine permitted consideration for potential use on next-generation launch and space transportation systems. , no flight models are known to exist. See also * Rocketdyn ...
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Merlin (rocket Engine)
Merlin is a family of rocket engines developed by SpaceX. They are currently a part of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, and were formerly used on the Falcon 1. Merlin engines use RP-1 and liquid oxygen as rocket propellants in a gas-generator power cycle. The Merlin engine was originally designed for sea recovery and reuse, but since 2016 the entire Falcon 9 booster is recovered for reuse by landing vertically on a landing pad using one of its nine Merlin engines. The injector at the heart of Merlin is of the pintle type that was first used in the Apollo Lunar Module landing engine ( LMDE). Propellants are fed by a single-shaft, dual-impeller turbopump. The turbopump also provides high-pressure fluid for the hydraulic actuators, which then recycles into the low-pressure inlet. This eliminates the need for a separate hydraulic drive system and means that thrust vectoring control failure by running out of hydraulic fluid is not possible. Revisions Merlin 1A The i ...
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Raptor (rocket Engine Family)
Raptor(s) or RAPTOR may refer to: Animals The word "raptor" refers to several groups of avian and non-avian dinosaurs which primarily capture and subdue/kill prey with their talons. * Raptor (bird) or bird of prey, a bird that primarily hunts and feeds on vertebrates * Raptor- or -raptor, a taxonomic affix used in to describe dromeosaurs or similar animals * Dromaeosauridae, a family of dinosaurs including Velociraptor, Utahraptor, Microraptor * Oviraptorosauria, a clade of dinosaurs including Oviraptor and Gigantoraptor * Megaraptora, a clade of dinosaurs including Fukuiraptor Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Raptor'' (film), a 2001 film * Raptor, a fictional spacecraft in '' Battlestar Galactica'' Gaming * '' Raptor: Call of the Shadows'', a 1994 video game * Raptor heavy fighter, a fictional craft in the '' Wing Commander'' game * Lord Raptor, a ''Darkstalkers'' character In print * ''Raptor'' (novel), a 1993 novel by Gary Jennings * Raptor ...
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Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscription model, requiring readers to pay for access to most of its articles and content. The ''Journal'' is published six days a week by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corp. As of 2023, ''The'' ''Wall Street Journal'' is the largest newspaper in the United States by print circulation, with 609,650 print subscribers. It has 3.17 million digital subscribers, the second-most in the nation after ''The New York Times''. The newspaper is one of the United States' newspapers of record. The first issue of the newspaper was published on July 8, 1889. The editorial page of the ''Journal'' is typically center-right in its positions. The newspaper has won 39 Pulitzer Prizes. History Founding and 19th century A predecessor to ' ...
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Fastrac (engine)
Fastrac was a turbo pump-fed, liquid rocket engine. The engine was designed by NASA as part of the low cost X-34 Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) and as part of the Low Cost Booster Technology (LCBT, aka Bantam) project. This engine was later known as the MC-1 engine when it was merged into the X-34 project. Design The turbopump engine was designed to be used in an expendable booster in the LCBT project. As a result this led to the use of composite materials because of their significantly lower costs and production speed; this also reduced engine complexity since the fuel was not used for nozzle cooling. Based on knowledge and experience from the Space Shuttle's Reusable Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM) and the Solid Propulsion Integrity Program (SPIP), a Silica/phenolic material was chosen for the ablative liner with carbon/epoxy structural overlap. The engine used liquid oxygen as an oxidizer and kerosene (RP-1) as a fuel. These propellants are used by the F-1 rocket engine on the ...
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SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the company has made numerous advancements in rocket propulsion, reusable launch vehicles, human spaceflight and satellite constellation technology. , SpaceX is the world's dominant space launch provider, its launch cadence eclipsing all others, including private competitors and national programs like the Chinese space program. SpaceX, NASA, and the United States Armed Forces work closely together by means of Government contractor, governmental contracts. SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with a vision of decreasing the costs of space launches, paving the way to SpaceX ambition of colonizing Mars, a sustainable colony on Mars. In 2008, Falcon 1 successfully launched into orbit after three failed launch attempts. The company then pivoted towar ...
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Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman. He is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been considered the wealthiest person in the world since 2021; ''Forbes'' estimates his net worth to be . Born to a wealthy family in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk emigrated in 1989 to Canada. He received bachelor's degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 before moving to California, United States, to pursue business ventures. In 1995, Musk co-founded the software company Zip2. Following its sale in 1999, he co-founded X.com, an online payment company that later merged to form PayPal, which was acquired by eBay in 2002. That year, Musk also became an American citizen. In 2002, Musk founded the space technology company SpaceX, becoming its CEO and chief engineer; the company has since led innovations in reusable rockets and commercial spaceflight. Musk joined ...
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NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States's civil list of government space agencies, space program, aeronautics research and outer space, space research. National Aeronautics and Space Act, Established in 1958, it succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give the American space development effort a distinct civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. It has since led most of America's space exploration programs, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968–1972 Apollo program missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA supports the International Space Station (ISS) along with the Commercial Crew Program and oversees the development of the Orion (spacecraft), Orion spacecraft and the Sp ...
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TRW Inc
TRW Inc. was an American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace, electronics, automotive, and credit reporting.http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/TRW-Inc-Company-History.html TRW Inc. It was a pioneer in multiple fields including electronic components, integrated circuits, computers, software and systems engineering. TRW built many spacecraft, including Pioneer 1, Pioneer 10, and several space-based observatories. It was #57 on the 1986 Fortune 500 list, and had 122,258 employees. The company was called Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc., after the 1958 merger of the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation and Thompson Products. This was later shortened to TRW. The company was founded in 1901 and lasted for just over a century until being acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2002. It spawned a variety of corporations, including Pacific Semiconductors, The Aerospace Corporation, Bunker-Ramo and Experian. Its automotive businesses were sold off by Northro ...
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