[AR] Re: Regarding Univerity solid rockets for cube-sat launch to orbit
- From: Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2018 12:21:53 -0700
On 3/3/2018 11:16 AM, J Farmer wrote:
Was all directional control during a Shuttle launch done via it's
engines and none via the SRBs?
On Shuttle, both the main engines and the SRB nozzles were able to pivot
to steer the stack.
Have there been working launch vehicles with solid motors that didn't
use some sort of aerodynamic control?
By "with solid motors", do you mean, including solid motors in the mix,
or exclusively solid motor-propelled? By aerodynamic control, I presume
you mean external fins, either steerable or fixed?
Regardless, the short answer is "yes".
The more detailed answer is, solids on launch vehicles often have no
inherent steering ability, with vehicle steering provided by some mix of
launch rails, fins fixed or pivotable, gimballed liquid main engines,
and/or smaller steering "reaction control" engines.
Some solids do have inherent steering ability, via pivotable nozzles
(complex expensive and uncommon), via small pivotable fins inside the
main exhaust stream (EG V-2 style, also a recent NK solid stage), and
via liquid thrust vector control, where small amounts of a liquid
propellant are injected into fixed nozzles around the periphery of the
main engine exhaust to steer the overall exhaust direction. Titan 4
used this last on its large solid strapons, for just one example.
Henry
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