[AR] Re: SpaceX iced TEA
- From: Henry Spencer <henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 17:05:18 -0500 (EST)
On Fri, 22 Nov 2013, Ed Kelleher wrote:
> Has TEA/TEB ignition been used before on 2nd Stage? Seems most upper
> stages are hypergolic, or augmented spark type ignition.
> Apparently it hasn't been used much on American launchers.
More or less by historical accident, LOX/kerosene upper stages haven't
been common in the West. Low-performance upper stages used hypergolics
(no igniter), and high-performance ones used hydrogen (spark or torch
igniters preferred).
Even the LOX/kerosene first stages generally didn't have *plumbing* for
their TEA/TEB igniters, just cartridges in fuel lines, because they didn't
have to be restartable.
The only Western LOX/kerosene upper stage I can think of is Titan I's
second stage, and if that used hypergol ignition, it probably just used a
hypergol cartridge, because it wasn't restartable.
Henry Spencer
henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
(regexpguy@xxxxxxxxx)
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