HOME



picture info

Tom Mueller
Thomas John Mueller is an American aerospace engineer and rocket engine designer. He was a founding employee of SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California, and the founder and CEO of Impulse Space. He is best known for his engineering work on the TR-106 and several SpaceX 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 w ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

University Of Idaho
The University of Idaho (U of I, or UIdaho) is a public land-grant research university in Moscow, Idaho. It is the state's land-grant and primary research university,, and the lead university in the Idaho Space Grant Consortium. The University of Idaho was the state's sole university for 71 years, until 1963. Its College of Law, established in 1909, was first accredited by the American Bar Association in 1925. Formed by the Idaho Territory legislature on January 30, 1889, the university opened its doors in 1892 on October 3, with an initial class of 40 students. The first graduating class in 1896 contained two men and two women. It has an enrollment exceeding 12,000, with over 11,000 on the Moscow campus. The university offers 142 degree programs, from accountancy to wildlife resources, including bachelor's, master's, doctoral, and specialists' degrees, and accompanyinhonors programs Certificates of completion are offered in 30 areas of study. At 25% and 53%, its 4 and 6 ye ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Patents
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A patent is not the grant of a right to make or use or sell. It does not, directly or indirectly, imply any such right. It grants only the right to exclude others. The supposition that a right to make is created by the patent grant is obviously inconsistent with the established distinctions between generic and specific patents, and with the well-known fact that a very considerable portion of the patents granted are in a field covered by a former relatively generic or basic patent, are tributary to such earlier patent, and cannot be practiced unless by license thereunder." – ''Herman v. Youngstown Car Mfg. Co.'', 191 F. 579, 584–85, 112 CCA 185 (6th Cir. 1911) In most countries, patent rights fall under private law and the patent holder mu ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Falcon 1
Falcon 1 was a small-lift launch vehicle that was operated from 2006 to 2009 by SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer. On 28 September 2008, Falcon 1 became the first privately-developed fully liquid-fueled launch vehicle to go into orbit around the Earth. The two-stage-to-orbit rocket used LOX/RP-1 for both stages, the first powered by a single Merlin engine and the second powered by a single Kestrel engine. It was designed by SpaceX from the ground up. The vehicle was launched a total of five times. After three failed launch attempts, Falcon 1 achieved orbit on its fourth attempt in September 2008 with a mass simulator as a payload. On 14 July 2009, Falcon 1 made its second and final flight, successfully delivering the Malaysian RazakSAT satellite to orbit on SpaceX's first commercial launch (fifth launch overall). Following this flight, the Falcon 1 was retired and succeeded by Falcon 9. SpaceX had announced an enhanced variant, the Falcon 1e, but development wa ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Kestrel (rocket Engine)
The SpaceX Kestrel was an LOX/RP-1 pressure-fed rocket engine. The Kestrel engine was developed in the 2000s by SpaceX for upper stage use on the Falcon 1 rocket. Kestrel is no longer being manufactured; the last flight of Falcon 1 was in 2009. Kestrel was built around the same pintle architecture as the SpaceX Merlin engine but does not have a turbopump and is fed only by tank pressure. Kestrel was ablatively cooled in the chamber and throat and radiatively cooled in the nozzle, which was fabricated from a high strength niobium alloy. As a metal, niobium is highly resistant to cracking compared to carbon-carbon. According to SpaceX, an impact from orbital debris or during stage separation might dent the metal but have no meaningful effect on engine performance. Helium pressurant efficiency is substantially increased via a titanium heat exchanger on the ablative/niobium boundary. Thrust vector control is provided by electro-mechanical actuators on the engine dome for pitch ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Merlin 1A
Merlin is a family of rocket engines developed by SpaceX for use on its Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles. 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 initial version, the Merlin 1A, used ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the philanthropic Musk Foundation. With an estimated net worth of around $139 billion as of December 23, 2022, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is the second-wealthiest person in the world according to both the ''Bloomberg Billionaires Index'' and '' Forbes'' real-time billionaires list. Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa and briefly attended at the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Reaction Research Society
The Reaction Research Society (not to be confused with UK-based Reaction Engines) is the oldest continuously operating amateur experimental rocket group in the United States. Founded by George James on 6 January 1943, originally as the Southern California Rocket Society, the organization's name was changed to the Glendale Rocket Society two months later. Ultimately, the society changed its name to the Reaction Research Society around 1946 to encompass more aspects of propulsion beyond rocketry, however most research and experimentation at the RRS has been with solid, liquid and hybrid rocketry. The RRS is an educational non-profit group in California based in Los Angeles. Monthly meetings are typically held at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena, California. The RRS has owned and operated a private testing site, the Mojave Test Area (MTA), north of Edwards Air Force Base and California City in the Mojave desert since 1955. See also * High-power rocketry * Amateur & Exp ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

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 North ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, and maintain mechanical systems. It is one of the oldest and broadest of the engineering branches. Mechanical engineering requires an understanding of core areas including mechanics, dynamics, thermodynamics, materials science, structural analysis, and electricity. In addition to these core principles, mechanical engineers use tools such as computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), and product lifecycle management to design and analyze manufacturing plants, industrial equipment and machinery, heating and cooling systems, transport systems, aircraft, watercraft, robotics, medical devices, weapons, and others. Mechanical engineering emerged as a field during the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 18 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Oxy-fuel Welding And Cutting
Principle of burn cutting Oxy-fuel welding (commonly called oxyacetylene welding, oxy welding, or gas welding in the United States) and oxy-fuel cutting are processes that use fuel gases (or liquid fuels such as gasoline or petrol, diesel, bio diesel, kerosene, etc) and oxygen to weld or cut metals. French engineers Edmond Fouché and Charles Picard became the first to develop oxygen-acetylene welding in 1903. Pure oxygen, instead of air, is used to increase the flame temperature to allow localized melting of the workpiece material (e.g. steel) in a room environment. A common propane/air flame burns at about , a propane/oxygen flame burns at about , an oxyhydrogen flame burns at and an acetylene/oxygen flame burns at about . During the early 20th century, before the development and availability of coated arc welding electrodes in the late 1920s that were capable of making sound welds in steel, oxy-acetylene welding was the only process capable of making welds of except ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Model Rocket
A model rocket are small rockets designed to reach low altitudes (e.g., for model) and be recovered by a variety of means. According to the United States National Association of Rocketry (NAR) Safety Code, model rockets are constructed of paper, wood, plastic and other lightweight materials. The code also provides guidelines for motor use, launch site selection, launch methods, launcher placement, recovery system design and deployment and more. Since the early 1960s, a copy of the Model Rocket Safety Code has been provided with most model rocket kits and motors. Despite its inherent association with extremely flammable substances and objects with a pointed tip traveling at high speeds, model rocketry historically has proven to be a very safe hobby and has been credited as a significant source of inspiration for children who eventually become scientists and engineers. History of model rocketry While there were many small rockets produced after years of research and experim ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]