Northrop Grumman has successfully completed multiple rounds of tests on its Solid Fuel Ramjet tactical engine configuration – a technology to enable long range precision fires, one of the U.S. Army’s key priorities.
https://preview.redd.it/axkph7aslt261.jpg?width=602&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f17891f8a82eab176918fe57b94042bfb31bbed0
Lines from last December's Scientific American article, as well as Toyota's recent patent filing for a soot moderating/eliminating engine design, as well as Toyota's position within the hybrid and electric car space would seem to indicate that a diesel electric redesign could be coming.
Raw data from Sandia National Laboratories' initial testing of the simple enhancement would seem to indicate that a fuel economy bump of 30% is not at all unreasonable, but Toyota's other strengths encourage me to believe they might be working on a redesign with much greater economy of fuel, while keeping or increasing torque and hp numbers through a hybrid design.
Could a 50mpg diesel electric hybrid Tundra with 350hp and 500ftlbs from a 2L-4cyl+electric motor be out of the question?
This would seem to be the natural path for smaller diesel engines anyway? Do the hybrid components kill you on weight? Could the combination ever meet current expectations of truck owners for power and torque within a comparable platform?
I'd love to hear people's thoughts.
[Also, the innovation itself eliminates the need for DEF or a exhaust filter. Think I've seen that at a costless 10% bump in efficiency, plus a 50-100lbs payload bump. Add that to the engine shrinkage, and you're getting ~250lbs more payload.]
[Logical integration path would be as follows
1). Retrofitting of the ducted injector into existing engines for the efficiency bump with removal of the NOx and particulate removal systems.
1a). Downtuning of existing engines with supplementary power from integrated starter generators or compact hybrid systems to keep power and torque requirements.
2). Engine redesigns or new builds with full hybrid platform integration. Note that one commentor on this thread believe the marginal cost of smaller engines to be the same as larger ones. Yeah....no. Smaller, more efficient engines with supplementary hybrid systems give you clear upgrades and flexibility with respect to both power and efficiency. Weight savings (ie payload bump) and range extension are also in the mix when optimizing such a platform for any given application.]
Hello,
I'm trying to use either the thermal turbojet or ramjet with a nuclear reactor and I don't see the fuel options I was expecting. Can anyone point me in the right direction? See below. Why would I have liquid helium4 but not LH2 or liquid fuel or LOX? Github seems to suggest I should be able to use LH2 and liquid fuel. Let me know and thanks for your help.
https://preview.redd.it/a9lbgt335h661.png?width=529&format=png&auto=webp&s=ec7d320de5bbcf0402edc0924e7c6cf1a436a367
So, for a long while now, Thiokol's "Star motor" lineup of high-mass-fraction solid-fuel kickstages has been the standard, go-to kickstage to use, i.e. when trying to give a bunch of extra delta-V to a lightweight probe that you are trying to get to a high velocity for a far away destination (i.e. stuff like the Voyager probes, New Horizons probe, Pioneer probes, Parker Solar Probe, etc).
But, I think they also use them for earth-orbiting satellites sometimes, too, to get a bit more (relatively) cheap delta-v during the final phase of the launch to get them into higher orbits that would otherwise require a bigger launch vehicle, but that you can tip over the edge into doability by just adding a Thiokol Star27 or Star37 or Star48 kickstage to payload in the top of a smaller launch vehicle, and thus save a bunch of money overall, from not having to pay for a bigger launcher than would've otherwise been necessary.
For those who are unfamiliar with these kickstages, here is the Thiokol Star motor wiki page that goes into detail and specs about a bunch of these solid-fuel kickstages:
Thiokol "Star" solid fuel kickstage motors.
Edit: not sure how to get the wiki link to work, since the url ends in a parentheses, lol. I tried adding a slash after the parentheses in the link coding, to see if that might help, but that didn't work either. Anyway, if you click on the "did you mean Star (Rocket Stage)" link at the top of that page it links to, that takes you directly to the proper page.
Here are some photos (from wikipedia) of what these Thiokol Star-kickstage motors look like, for those who are curious:
Star 48 motor aftermath This last one is of a Star 48 kickstage motor that failed to burn up in the atmosphere when it fell back to earth, and thus randomly landed on the ground somewhere in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert. (Note the facial expression of the dude on the right, btw).
As you can see, the ISP of the best of these (the Star-37Y and Star-48B) are only in the 290s (albeit not bad for solid fuel, but, still, obviously not as high as something like, say, a hydrogen upperstage), but, the idea is that if you get a good enough mass-fraction, you can potentially outperform a stage with a much higher ISP, if your mass-fraction
... keep reading on reddit ➡A solid fuel thruster could be a cheap, high-thrust alternative to other thrusters, at the cost of not being reusable, throttleable, or able to be shut down after being ignited. There'd be a number of uses for such a block:
- Torpedoes: detach from the parent ship, then ignite to accelerate a projectile to high speeds - without the plumbing complexity of a hydrogen thruster system or the rare metal cost of ion thrusters.
- Mines: similar to the torpedoes, but a stationary emplacement. When a sensor detects an enemy ship, ignite and accelerate to intercept.
- Emergency stop: Forget a parachute or coming up on an asteroid too fast for your regular thrusters to prevent a collision? Hit the emergency stop button to slow your craft to a hopefully-survivable velocity.
- Escape pod: Ship blowing up? Hop in the pod and have it eject you to a safe distance, so you might be able to survive.
Getting back into rockets with my son and i want to do it "right" this time. ((We're starting with Estes level 1 & 2 kits and only have the space - and clearance living near an airport - to go up to maybe C motors))
Idea is that he'll learn proper responsibility and understanding that while this stuff is fun... It's not exactly a toy. ((He's 8).
One of the first things I like to teach him with anything new is safety...
Solid fuel motors are not something to just leave on a workbench or in the trunk... How/what is the recommended way to safely store them?
Secondary question.... Parachute never fully deploys, advice?
i added mods to the game but i uninstalled them because i wanted to try mods later. whenever i use a liquid fuel engine it does not do anything, even spark. i uninstalled and re installed the game and this still happens. not even infinite fuel on the debug menu works. one of my wheels also always get stuck in the ground and it starts moving me or spinning me. my camera also randomly starts running away from my vehicle
https://reddit.com/link/rnngzj/video/f8ipsw546k781/player
Am I missing something? Does a “launch” only mean in orbit and not interplanetary?
