1,000,000-Lb. Engine

Weighing the size of Russia's Sputniks, U.S. experts have surmised that the Russians may have a massive, single-chamber rocket engine for which the U.S. has no match. The U.S.'s most powerful engine develops only 150,000 Ibs. of thrust, is made by Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation, Inc. for the Thor and Jupiter (the considerably larger Atlas uses a cluster of engines). Last week Rocketdyne was starting work on an Air Force contract for developing a monster engine with 1,000,000 Ibs. of thrust.

Such an engine, said Rocketdyne, will be the first designed deliberately for true space flight (the current U.S. lunar-probe projects plan to use a combination of existing military rocket engines). The big, single-chamber engine has major advantages. When more than four engines are clustered together, their pumps, fuel pipes and other auxiliary apparatus become uncomfortably complicated. If one of the many engines fails, the whole launching ends in disaster.

A 1,000,000-lb. engine, says Rocketdyne, would open new possibilities. Combined with appropriate secondary stages, it could put a 20,000-lb. satellite in a polar orbit 1,000 miles high. It could carry 6,200 Ibs. of payload around the moon, 2,000 Ibs. around Mars. With proper auxiliary apparatus it could land a 1,600-lb. payload gently on the moon, or a 400-lb. payload on Mars. Yoked together, four of these engines should be capable of putting man into space along with enough of his natural environment to keep him alive.

Developing a 1,000,000-lb. engine, says Rocketdyne, will take perhaps five years, but it will not require any new scientific breakthroughs. The present Thor engine, which is about as big as a small sports car, will be scaled up to about three times as big. New alloys (probably tungsten-molybdenum-nickel) will be needed for the walls of the thrust chamber, whose temperature will rise from 1,000DEG-1,200DEG range to the 1,800DEG-2,000DEG range. Combustion-chamber pressure will rise from the current 300-500-lb. range toward 1,000 Ibs. per sq. in. The turbopumps that deliver fuel to existing engines demand 3,000 h.p.-4,000 h.p. The pumps of the new engine will need 30,000 h.p.-40,000 h.p. --the equivalent of the power delivered by the six jet engines of a B-47.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.