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40-482: [REDACTED] Look up aerospike in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Aerospike may refer to: Aerospike engine , a rocket engine without a traditional rocket nozzle Drag-reducing aerospike , a device which reduces drag on missiles by creating a detached shock above the missile Aerospike (database) , an open-source noSQL database Aerospike (company) ,

80-557: A Bundeswehr contract to design and flight test a linear aerospike engine in April 2023. The company is set to test this new engine on board of its fourth spaceplane demonstrator, DEMO-4 MIRA, in late 2023 at Peenemünde, where the V-2 rockets were developed. The original MIRA demonstrator was catastrophically damaged in a runway accident in February 2024. On 29 October 2024, the company

120-535: A contender for the Space Shuttle main engine . However, as of 2023 no such engine was in commercial production, although some large-scale aerospikes were in testing phases. The term aerospike was originally used for a truncated plug nozzle with a rough conical taper and some gas injection, forming an "air spike" to help make up for the absence of the plug tail. However, a full-length plug nozzle may also be called an aerospike. The purpose of any engine bell

160-550: A flight test of a liquid-propellant powered aerospike engine in the Mojave Desert on September 20, 2003. CSULB students had developed their Prospector 2 (P-2) rocket using a 1,000 lb f (4.4 kN) LOX/ethanol aerospike engine. This work on aerospike engines continues; Prospector-10, a ten-chamber aerospike engine, was test-fired June 25, 2008. Further progress came in March 2004 when two successful tests sponsored by

200-432: A linear aerospike engine. The rocket is designed to send up to 100 kg into low-Earth orbit, at a price of US$ 1 million per launch. They later announced that their Executor Aerospike engine would produce 50,500 pounds-force (225 kN) of thrust at sea level and 73,800 pounds-force (328 kN) of thrust in a vacuum. In June 2017, ARCA announced that they would fly their Demonstrator3 rocket to space, also using

240-456: A linear aerospike engine. This rocket was designed to test several components of their Haas 2CA at lower cost. They announced a flight for August 2017. In September 2017, ARCA announced that, after being delayed, their linear aerospike engine was ready to perform ground tests and flight tests on a Demonstrator3 rocket. On December 20, 2019, ARCA tested the LAS 25DA aerospike steam rocket engine for

280-569: A second launch attempt. In November 2021, Spain-based Pangea Aerospace began hot-fire testing of its small-scale demonstration methane-oxygen aerospike engine DemoP1. After successfully testing the demonstrator DemoP1, Pangea plans to up-scale to the 300 kN ARCOS engine. Headquartered in Kent, Washington, Stoke Space is building and testing a distributed architecture LH2/LOX aerospike system for its reusable second stage. The Bremen -based German startup POLARIS Raumflugzeuge GmbH received

320-563: A technology company based in Mountain View, California, US Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Aerospike . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aerospike&oldid=954502340 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

360-442: A test cell at TU Dresden's Institute of Aerospace Engineering, achieving a burn time of 30 seconds. In July 2014 Firefly Space Systems announced its planned Alpha launcher that uses an aerospike engine for its first stage. Intended for the small satellite launch market, it is designed to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO) at a price of US$ 8–9 million, much lower than with conventional launchers. Firefly Alpha 1.0

400-450: Is deprecated". Units derived from the bar include the megabar (symbol: Mbar ), kilobar (symbol: kbar ), decibar (symbol: dbar ), centibar (symbol: cbar ), and millibar (symbol: mbar ). The bar is defined using the SI derived unit , pascal : 1 bar ≡ 100,000 Pa ≡ 100,000 N/m . Thus, 1 bar is equal to: and 1 bar is approximately equal to: 1 millibar ( mbar )

440-419: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Aerospike engine The aerospike engine is a type of rocket engine that maintains its aerodynamic efficiency across a wide range of altitudes . It belongs to the class of altitude compensating nozzle engines. Aerospike engines were proposed for many single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) designs. They were

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480-465: Is equal to: The word bar has its origin in the Ancient Greek word βάρος ( baros ), meaning weight . The unit's official symbol is bar ; the earlier symbol b is now deprecated and conflicts with the uses of b denoting the unit barn or bit , but it is still encountered, especially as mb (rather than the proper mbar ) to denote the millibar. Between 1793 and 1795, the word bar

520-817: Is often described in bar outside the United States. Tire pressure is often specified in bar. In hydraulic machinery components are rated to the maximum system oil pressure, which is typically in hundreds of bar. For example, 300 bar is common for industrial fixed machinery. In the maritime ship industries, pressures in piping systems, such as cooling water systems, is often measured in bar. Unicode has characters for "mb" ( U+33D4 ㏔ SQUARE MB SMALL ), "bar" ( U+3374 ㍴ SQUARE BAR ) and ミリバール ( U+334A ㍊ SQUARE MIRIBAARU ), but they exist only for compatibility with legacy Asian encodings and are not intended to be used in new documents. The kilobar, equivalent to 100 MPa,

560-690: Is on outdoor display on the grounds of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville Alabama. The cancellation of the Lockheed Martin X-33 by the federal government in 2001 decreased funding availability, but aerospike engines remain an area of active research. For example, a milestone was achieved when a joint academic/industry team from California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) and Garvey Spacecraft Corporation successfully conducted

600-450: Is to direct the exhaust of a rocket engine in one direction, generating thrust in the opposite direction. The exhaust, a high-temperature mix of gases, has an effectively random momentum distribution (i.e., the exhaust pushes in any direction it can). If the exhaust is allowed to escape in this form, only a small part of the flow will be moving in the correct direction and thus contribute to forward thrust. The bell redirects exhaust moving in

640-446: The geopotential anomaly the pressure can be converted into metres' depth according to an empirical formula (UNESCO Tech. Paper 44, p. 25). As a result, decibar is commonly used in oceanography . In scuba diving, bar is also the most widely used unit to express pressure, e.g. 200 bar being a full standard scuba tank, and depth increments of 10 metre of seawater being equivalent to 1 bar of pressure. Many engineers worldwide use

680-405: The linear aerospike the spike consists of a tapered wedge-shaped plate, with exhaust exiting on either side at the "thick" end. This design has the advantage of being stackable, allowing several smaller engines to be placed in a row to make one larger engine while augmenting steering performance with the use of individual engine throttle control. Rocketdyne conducted a lengthy series of tests in

720-431: The "wrong" direction (i.e., outward from the main exhaust plume), the efficiency of the engine is reduced as the rocket travels because this escaping exhaust is no longer contributing to the thrust of the engine. An aerospike rocket engine seeks to eliminate this loss of efficiency. Instead of firing the exhaust out of a small hole in the middle of a bell, an aerospike engine avoids this random distribution by firing along

760-608: The 1960s on various designs. Later models of these engines were based on their highly reliable J-2 engine machinery and provided the same sort of thrust levels as the conventional engines they were based on; 200,000 lbf (890 kN ) in the J-2T-200k , and 250,000 lbf (1.1 MN) in the J-2T-250k (the T refers to the toroidal combustion chamber). Thirty years later their work was revived for use in NASA 's X-33 project. In this case

800-558: The Launch Assist System. Another spike engine concept model, by KSF Space and Interstellar Space in Los Angeles, was designed for orbital vehicle named SATORI. Due to lack of funding, the concept is still undeveloped. Rocketstar planned to launch its 3D-printed aerospike rocket to an altitude of 50 miles in February 2019 but canceled the mission three days ahead of liftoff citing safety concerns. They are working on

840-557: The NASA Dryden Flight Research Center using high-power rockets manufactured by Blacksky Corporation , based in Carlsbad, California . The aerospike nozzles and solid rocket motors were developed and built by the rocket motor division of Cesaroni Technology Incorporated , north of Toronto, Ontario. The two rockets were solid-fuel powered and fitted with non-truncated toroidal aerospike nozzles. Flown at

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880-730: The Pecos County Aerospace Development Center, Fort Stockton, Texas, the rockets achieved apogees of 26,000 ft (7,900 m) and speeds of about Mach 1.5. Small-scale aerospike engine development using a hybrid rocket propellant configuration has been ongoing by members of the Reaction Research Society . In 2020 the TU Dresden and Fraunhofer IWS started their CFDμSAT-Project for research on additively manufactured aerospike-engines. A prototype has already been tested in

920-429: The bar as a unit of pressure because, in much of their work, using pascals would involve using very large numbers. In measurement of vacuum and in vacuum engineering , residual pressures are typically given in millibar, although torr or millimeter of mercury (mmHg) were historically common. Pressures resulting from deflagrations are often expressed in units of bar. In the automotive field, turbocharger boost

960-566: The latest design, seven RS-2200s producing 542,000 pounds-force (2,410 kN) each would boost the VentureStar into low Earth orbit. The development on the RS-2200 was formally halted in early 2001 when the X-33 program did not receive Space Launch Initiative funding. Lockheed Martin chose to not continue the VentureStar program without any funding support from NASA. An engine of this type

1000-860: The millibar were introduced by the Norwegian meteorologist Vilhelm Bjerknes , who was a founder of the modern practice of weather forecasting , with the bar defined as one mega dyne per square centimeter . The SI brochure , despite previously mentioning the bar, now omits any mention of it. The bar has been legally recognised in countries of the European Union since 2004. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) deprecates its use except for "limited use in meteorology " and lists it as one of several units that "must not be introduced in fields where they are not presently used". The International Astronomical Union (IAU) also lists it under "Non-SI units and symbols whose continued use

1040-408: The outside edge of a wedge-shaped protrusion, the "spike", which serves the same function as a traditional engine bell. The spike forms one side of a "virtual" bell, with the other side being formed by the outside air. The idea behind the aerospike design is that at low altitude the ambient pressure compresses the exhaust against the spike. Exhaust recirculation in the base zone of the spike can raise

1080-408: The pressure in that zone to nearly ambient. Since the pressure in front of the vehicle is ambient, this means that the exhaust at the base of the spike nearly balances out with the drag experienced by the vehicle. It gives no overall thrust, but this part of the nozzle also doesn't lose thrust by forming a partial vacuum. The thrust at the base part of the nozzle can be ignored at low altitude. As

1120-403: The size of the bell automatically compensates as air pressure falls. The disadvantages of aerospikes seem to be extra weight for the spike. Furthermore, the larger cooled area can reduce performance below theoretical levels by reducing the pressure against the nozzle. Aerospikes work relatively poorly between Mach 1–3, where the airflow around the vehicle has reduced the pressure, thus reducing

1160-509: The slightly upgraded J-2S engine machinery was used with a linear spike, creating the XRS-2200 . After more development and considerable testing, this project was cancelled when the X-33's composite fuel tanks repeatedly failed. Three XRS-2200 engines were built during the X-33 program and underwent testing at NASA's Stennis Space Center . The single-engine tests were a success, but the program

1200-431: The thrust. Several versions of the design exist, differentiated by their shapes. In the toroidal aerospike the spike is bowl-shaped with the exhaust exiting in a ring around the outer rim. In theory this requires an infinitely long spike for best efficiency, but by blowing a small amount of gas out of the center of a shorter truncated spike (like base bleed in an artillery shell), something similar can be achieved. In

1240-456: The use of the millibar in US reports of hurricanes and other cyclonic storms. In fresh water, there is an approximate numerical equivalence between the change in pressure in decibar and the change in depth from the water surface in metres . Specifically, an increase of 1 decibar occurs for every 1.019716 m increase in depth. In sea water with respect to the gravity variation, the latitude and

Aerospike - Misplaced Pages Continue

1280-448: The values are convenient. After the advent of SI units, some meteorologists began using hectopascals (symbol hPa) which are numerically equivalent to millibar; for the same reason, the hectopascal is now the standard unit used to express barometric pressures in aviation in most countries. For example, the weather office of Environment Canada uses kilopascals and hectopascals on their weather maps. In contrast, Americans are familiar with

1320-423: The vehicle climbs to higher altitudes, the air pressure holding the exhaust against the spike decreases, as does the drag in front of the vehicle. The recirculation zone at the base of the spike maintains the pressure in that zone to a fraction of 1 bar , higher than the near-vacuum in front of the vehicle, thus giving extra thrust as altitude increases. This effectively behaves like an "altitude compensator" in that

1360-441: The wrong direction so that it generates thrust in the correct direction. Ambient air pressure also imparts a small pressure against the exhaust, helping to keep it moving in the "right" direction as it exits the engine. As the vehicle travels upward through the atmosphere, ambient air pressure is reduced. This causes the thrust-generating exhaust to begin to expand outside the edge of the bell. Since this exhaust begins traveling in

1400-410: Was designed to carry payloads of up to 400 kilograms (880 lb). It uses carbon composite materials and uses the same basic design for both stages. The plug-cluster aerospike engine puts out 90,000 pounds-force (400 kN) of thrust. The engine has a bell-shaped nozzle that has been cut in half, then stretched to form a ring with the half-nozzle now forming the profile of a plug. This rocket design

1440-532: Was first tested at the UK Race to Space National Propulsion Competition in 2023. The team is developing a flight-ready version of the engine they are planning to fly for the first time at EuRoC24 . SpaceFields, incubated at IISc, has successfully tested India's first AeroSpike Rocket Engine at its Challakere facility on 11-Sep-2024. The engine achieved a peak thrust of 2000N and featured altitude compensation for optimal efficiency. Bar (unit) The bar and

1480-541: Was halted before the testing for the two-engine setup could be completed. The XRS-2200 produces 204,420 lbf (909,300 N) thrust with an I sp of 339 seconds at sea level, and 266,230 lbf (1,184,300 N) thrust with an I sp of 436.5 seconds in a vacuum. The RS-2200 Linear Aerospike Engine was derived from the XRS-2200. The RS-2200 was to power the VentureStar single-stage-to-orbit vehicle. In

1520-507: Was never launched. The design was abandoned after Firefly Space Systems went bankrupt. A new company, Firefly Aerospace , has replaced the aerospike engine with a conventional engine in the Alpha 2.0 design. However, the company has proposed Firefly Gamma, a partially reusable spaceplane with aerospike engines. In March 2017 ARCA Space Corporation announced their intention to build a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) rocket, named Haas 2CA , using

1560-663: Was the first ever to ignite an aerospike engine in a flight over the Baltic Sea, powering a four-engine, kerosene-fueled, turbojet MIRA-II demonstrator. The test involved a three-second burn to collect data with minimal engine stress. The vehicle achieved an acceleration of 4 m/s², producing 900 newtons of thrust. Based at the University of Bath , the Bath Rocket Team has been developing their own hybrid rocket engine with an aerospike nozzle since 2020. The engine

1600-419: Was used for a unit of mass (equal to the modern tonne ) in an early version of the metric system. Atmospheric air pressure where standard atmospheric pressure is defined as 1013.25 mbar, 101.325  kPa , 1.01325 bar, which is about 14.7 pounds per square inch . Despite the millibar not being an SI unit, meteorologists and weather reporters worldwide have long measured air pressure in millibar as

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