- NASA has successfully completed two years of testing radical, new
rocket engines that could change the future of space travel. NASA and its
industry partners have ground tested rocket engines that "breathe"
oxygen from the air.
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- "Air-breathing rocket engine technologies
have the potential of opening the space frontier to ordinary folks,"
said Uwe Hueter of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
"We've proven the technologies on the ground with extensive testing
of complex and technically challenging system components. Now, I believe
we're ready to demonstrate the technologies in flight."
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- Air-breathing rocket engines could make
future space travel like today's air travel, said Hueter, manager of NASA's
Advanced Reusable Technologies project. The spacecraft would be completely
reusable, take off and land at airport runways, and be ready to fly again
within days.
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- An air-breathing rocket engine inhales
oxygen from the air for about half the flight, so it doesn't have to store
the gas onboard. So at take-off, an air-breathing rocket weighs much less
than a conventional rocket, which carries all of its fuel and oxygen onboard.
Getting off the ground is the most expensive part of any mission to low-Earth
orbit, and reducing a vehicle's weight decreases cost significantly.
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- An air-breathing engine (called a rocket-based,
combined cycle engine) gets its initial take-off power from specially designed
rockets, called air-augmented rockets, that boost performance about 15
percent over conventional rockets. When the vehicle's velocity reaches
twice the speed of sound, the rockets are turned off and the engine relies
totally on oxygen in the atmosphere to burn the hydrogen fuel. Once the
vehicle's speed increases to about 10 times the speed of sound, the engine
converts to a conventional rocket-powered system to propel the vehicle
into orbit.
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- This unconventional approach to getting
to space is one of the technologies NASA's Advanced Space Transportation
Program at the Marshall Center is developing to make space transportation
affordable for everyone from business travelers to tourists. NASA's goal
is to reduce launch costs from today's price tag of $10,000 per pound to
only hundreds of dollars per pound.
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- GASL, a small aerospace company in Ronkonkoma,
N.Y., has conducted most of the air-breathing rocket engine testing at
its facilities on Long Island. GASL's unique facility is capable of testing
across a wide range of speeds and modes the rocket engine must achieve
in flight.
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- NASA's industry partners in developing
air-breathing rocket technologies are: Aerojet Corp. of Sacramento, Calif.;
Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif.; Astrox Corp. of Rockville, Md.; Pennsylvania
State University of University Park; and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
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