Abstract
In this chapter we will be looking specifically at rockets intended to lift a payload into Space. Although some aspects of our account are relevant to any rocket, regardless of its purpose, we will primarily be concerned with the practicalities of how a rocket gets to orbit, how its payload stays in orbit and how at least some of it gets back intact.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Voight et al. (2013) for an idea of what really comes out of the back of a rocket. Solid-fuelld motors can be especially nasty.
- 3.
There is an important engineering lesson here: with multiple criteria (which, in reality, will include things like safety and cost) ‘good enough’ is often better than ‘optimally efficient’.
- 4.
In the language of this section, the stick of a firework rocket leads to stable flight because it causes the cp to be below the cg.
- 5.
See https://www.leoaerospace.com/ for an example.
- 6.
Einstein’s General Relativity tells us that it will eventually come down, where ‘eventually’ is a very, very long time.
- 7.
A good introduction to what messes things up, along with a survey of what you can do about it, can be found at the longest link in this book: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/aam/cami/library/online_libraries/aerospace_medicine/tutorial/media/III.4.3.1_Space_Vehicle_Control_Systems.pdf
- 8.
The edge of space is known as the Kármán line and is nominally the point at which speed, rather than aerodynamic lift, is what’s keeping you up. Below the line the science is aeronautics; above it, astronautics. The original calculations by physicist Theodore von Kármán produced a figure of 83 km but 100 km was generally adopted as more memorable. The US Air Force and NASA prefer to use 80 km so if you travel with them you don’t need to get quite so high to become an astronaut.
- 9.
This is just a thought experiment. Don’t really do it—not even for Science.
- 10.
As many spacecraft designers will complain, you almost never hear about this problem in science fiction movies.
- 11.
All of which benefits their equivalents back on Earth.
- 12.
An accessible introduction to return from Space, both in terms of readability and the ease of getting a (digital) copy, is Launius & Jenkins (2011).
- 13.
More or less. Some energy is always transformed into other kinds, like the vibrational energies of the sound waves that rattle windows miles away. As we shall soon see, you can use other techniques to transfer energy, such as aerobraking— dipping into the planetary atmosphere and letting drag slow things down— but that’s not “coming back using rockets” and it brings its own set of challenges, mainly in the form of heat.
- 14.
Later Soviet ‘Moon robots’ employed a similar 2-stage lander concept to return samples to Earth.
- 15.
Although Sänger and his mathematician wife, Irene Bredt, worked on this concept until his death in 1964, to date the people who have shown the most interest in building it, such as the Nazis, have been more focused on its use as an intercontinental bomber. Today, the term dynamic soaring has a different meaning: the means by which a glider (or albatross) gains energy from the wind by carefully choosing a flight trajectory in a location with significant wind shear.
- 16.
But not, so far as we can tell, for manned systems. Apparently, with the grain layers facing outwards they will char and ablate quite nicely.
- 17.
Bryllium was lighter and absorbed more energy per unit mass than copper but was harder to work. Since launch mass is always an issue, you can see why it was preferred.
- 18.
Up until 1971, the Soviets concealed the fact that Gagarin had parachuted down separately from the capsule to avoid claims that they had not actually returned a man from orbit in a spacecraft. Chertok and Siddiqi (2011) gives an eye-wtness account of the lead up to, and aftermath of, Gagarin’s historic flight, including the many other things that went wrong.
- 19.
This is a common description by NASA and ESA astronauts who have experienced both. For discussion see https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7539..
- 20.
In essence, a graphite (i.e. carbon) fabric impregnated with a phenolic resin is cured, trimmed to shape and the resin itself converted to carbon by multiple applications of extreme heat (a process known as pyrolysis). Specific recipes vary but this is the basis of many nominally re-usable heat shield materials.
- 21.
The velocities of interplanetary travel are a lot higher than those of Earth orbit, so either you first do some fancy decelerating fly-bys, expend propellant to enter orbit or just accept the consequences of your speed.
Reference Works
Chertok, B. and A. Siddiqi. Rockets and People: Volume 3. (Washington, DC: NASA, 2011).
Launius, R.D. and Jenkins, D.R. Coming Home: Reentry and Recovery From Space, (Washington DC: NASA, 2011).
Rogers, L. It’s ONLY Rocket Science. (New York: Springer, 2008).
Sutton, G.P. and O. Billarz. Rocket Propulsion Elements, 8th ed. (New York: Wiley, 2010).
Travis, T. Introduction to Rocket Science and Engineering (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2009).
Turner, M.J.L. Rocket and Spacecraft Propulsion. (Berlin: Springer, 2009).
Voight, Ch., Schumann, U., Graf, K. and Gottschaldt, K.-D. “Impact of Rocket Exhaust Plumes on Atmospheric Composition and Climate - An Overview.” Progress in Propulsion Physics 4 (2013) 657–670.
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Denny, M., McFadzean, A. (2019). Poyekhali! To Space and Back. In: Rocket Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28080-2_4
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