Тезисы второго доклада на ноябрьскую конференцию
Possibilities For Direct-Flow Jet Engines To Use Extraterrestrial Mechanical Energy Reserves For Spacecraft Launch
Alexander O. Mayboroda
Russia
ABSTRACT
Further development of rocket-type engine space vehicles is limited. Cost-effectiveness and reduction of space exploration expenses can be provided by scramjet space vehicles development.
Scramjet space vehicle project by I.A. Merkulov, a Soviet aviation and rocket designer, published in the Messenger of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1956, allows the space vehicle to reach the speed of 50-60 М (15-18 km/sec) at the altitude of 70-80 km. The peculiarity of the engine described is in its operation without using chemical energy only at the expense of kinetic energy of the counter-current air flow and on-board stocks of non-combustible propellant.
When reaching the hypersonic speed, working fluid of virtually any composition is injected into the scramjet chamber, which leads to the release of previously accumulated kinetic energy in the form of heat due to collision and reciprocal braking of airflow and working substance. The heat releases in the amount exceeding that of generated by combustion of any best rocket fuel. In the result, output jet velocity is lower than input air speed, but the mass of the ejected working substance is greater than its mass when entering the straight-flow chamber and this creates the jet thrust under certain conditions. In the range of 30-40 M, specific momentum of such engine increases to 5000-7500 m / sec. As the speed increases, specific momentum increases as well. However, conventional rocket engines should be used for preliminary acceleration. Thus, efficient use of Merkulov’s engine is possible only after the moment when the space vehicle has reached the first cosmic velocity.
The problem of space vehicle preliminary acceleration can be solved through the use of special environment having considerable hypersonic speed relative to the space vehicle at the start or in the initial start period. As the environment available for us has no air flow with the speed of 30-40 M, the solution can obviously be found at the expense of environmental flows of artificial origin. The cost of artificial hypersonic flow creation is less than the expenses on launching spacecraft using rocket space vehicle when substances of celestial bodies are used.
The technology of artificial hypersonic substance flow creation to launch space vehicles is developed and offered in 2009 (RU patent 2385275, PCT/RU09/00739, US patent application 13202304). As the basis of hypersonic flow entering straight flow chamber at the speed exceeding 11-22 km/sec, it is suggested to use light section cables, which are produced outside the Earth, from the raw materials extracted from the Moon regolith or asteroids, from Mars’s or Venus’s atmosphere, length of cables being from 10 to1000 km. In the straight flow chamber with gas environment solid-state phase stream vaporizes and then acts as air flow, similar to Merkulov’s engine.
Merkulov’s project has provided the basis for further development of a more efficient extra-atmospheric scramjet. The scramjet is able to accelerate to the speed of more than 100 М in circumterrestrial space and up to 600 М in the atmospheres of giant planets. The features of the engine include the use of mechanical energy of celestial bodies’ and their satellites’ gravitation fields.
The use of space vehicles with the scramjet of the type described for active perturbation maneuvering in Jupiter elliptical orbit pericentre provides initial relative cable speed of 118 km/sec, the latter increases to 249 km/sec when the space vehicle accelerates. Relative to Jupiter pericentre the speed is 191 km/sec, while leaving the gravitation field of the planet the speed is 181.5 km/sec, working body at that is discharged at 90% of its initial mass.
Space vehicles accelerated at the expense of the Jupiter gravitation energy can be directed anywhere: to inner as well as outer planets of the solar system. The speed of movement in the solar system is 10 days per astronomical unit. Thus, such space vehicles are suitable and convenient to use for dangerous asteroids and comets interception.
In circumterrestrial space the such space vehicles can create artificial hypersonic substance flow up to 600 M. When the space vehicle accelerates up to 8 km/sec, the mass of the cable is only 2 tons, the mass of the space vehicle itself being over 100 tons. When space vehicles are launched by inexpensive suborbital shuttlecraft and then interact with such flows, their cost-effectiveness is obvious as their launch expenses are low.
