Rocket Engine facts

While investigating facts about Rocket Engine Design and Rocket Engine Diagram, I found out little known, but curios details like:

One of the main engineers behind NASA's Challenger rocket, which exploded in 1986, revealed that after NASA would not heed his warnings against launching in the cold weather, he told his wife the night before the launch, "It's going to blow up."

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NASA engineers had issues with the honey comb insulation of the Saturn V rocket, so they ended up hiring local surfers, who had experience in working with the material, to apply it to the rocket.

What is the most powerful rocket engine?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what is a rocket engine. Here are 50 of the best facts about Rocket Engineer Salary and Rocket Engine Model I managed to collect.

what are model rocket engines made of?

In 1954, Soviet rocket engineer Sergei Korolev could not get funding to pursue a space program, so he planted a fake new-story claiming Russia was going to launch a satellite. The US responded that they were also going to launch one, so the Soviets then agreed to fund the program.
A plane engine system that will be able to take a person anywhere in the world in four hours. The new system is called SABRE, which is a jet engine that also doubles as a rocket engine. In a commercial plane, 300 passengers will whizz around the world at five times the speed of sound.
The USA developed at least 2 working nuclear thermal rocket engines that were twice as efficient as chemical rockets, tested them both in the open air at Jackass Flats near Area 51, and deemed them ready to power a manned spaceflight mission to Mars.
Amazon rich guy Jeff Bezos has recovered Apollo 11 and 12 rocket engines from the Atlantic Ocean, at depths of around 14,000 feet, a mile deeper than the Titanic
A Baltimore man in 1928 built a rocket in attempt to fly to Venus using 50 gallons of gasoline as fuel, steel pipes as engines, and several layers of sailcloth covered in varnish to make it airtight.
SABRE engine technology - basically planes that go from the ground to an altitude of 25 km, reach Mach 5.5 and then become rockets, kick you back into your seat and reach a speed of Mach 25. Such planes could reach anywhere in the world in roughly 4 hours.
Serhii Koroliov, head engineer of the soviet space program, was tortured for 6 years in the GULAG prior to sending Yurii Gagarin to space. The other rocket scientists he was arrested with were executed.
There is a 300 ft street in Virginia called "warp drive" so named in 2011 because the employees of its largest business, Orbital ATK, manufacturers of military-grade rocket engines are avid fans of the Star Trek franchise.
Elon Musk forewarned today's failed rocket launch, stating "...Orbital Sciences... uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s...they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere."

rocket engine facts — What is the largest model rocket engine?

Why methane rocket engines?

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Three Stanford "rocket scientist" mechanical engineering PhD students invented a disease-detecting breath analyzer and were approved to test their prototype on human patients -- all in under one year, an almost unfathomable feat in the medical device realm

Axl Rose got his drummer's girlfriend to have sex with him in exchange for a bottle of whiskey, and the sounds were inserted in Guns N' Roses' song "Rocket Queen." The engineer who was forced to record it was credited in the album's liner notes as "Victor 'the fucking engineer' Deglio". - source

The trip to Mars would take only 39 days using a new type of nuke plasma rocket engine. - source

In 1993, Dateline NBC strapped model rocket engines to GM trucks for a televised crash-test so the trucks would explode on impact. After a GM lawsuit, three producers were fired and the reporter demoted.

Niobium alloys are also used in rocket and jet engines due to its superior strength at extremely high temperatures.

When combustion reactions occur inside a rocket's engine?

In the 1960's and 70's NASA tested Nuclear Rocket Engines for a Fast Manned Mars Mission that would have Humans on the Red Planet by now had it been approved

How rocket engine works in space?

Jimmy neutron's dog was named after Robert H. Goddard an American engineer, professor, physicist, and inventor who is credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket

The fuel pumps for the Saturn V rocket engines required 55,000 brake horsepower to supply 150,000 litres of liquid fuel per minute

The Kuznetsov Design Bureau produced a rocket engine in the late 1960s whose technology and performance were considered impossible by western rocket experts as late as the mid 1990s. Derivatives of those engines are used today by the United Launch Alliance on the Atlas V rocket.

During the testing of a Russian rocket in 1964 they needed to test filling the tanks with a fuel substitute, due to the freezing temperatures water would not be suitable. As a solution the Russian engineers filled it with a 40% alcohol mixture - they essentially filled the rocket with vodka

At the end of WWII ~1,600 German scientists and engineers who worked for the 3rd Reich were brought to U.S. to work on America’s behalf. The secret program was named Operation Paperclip because of the paperclip that got attached to the folders of rocket experts whom the U.S. wished to employ.

What action-reaction forces are involved when a rocket engine fires?

The International Space Station vents methane as a byproduct of its life support system, the very same fuel used by SpaceX's new Raptor engines; therefore, space-faring humans generate rocket fuel as a waste byproduct

If you were to stand very close to a rocket at launch you would not be killed by the heat of the exhaust, but by the sound of the engines

In 1915 he experimented with using the de Laval nozzles to increase the efficiency of his rocket engines and was able to achieve efficiencies of up to 63%.

NASA created a prototype rocket engine with 75 percent 3D-printed parts, and it underwent a whole series of fire tests this past October passing with flying colors.

How rocket engines are made?

Planetary Resources, a space mining company lead by two aerospace engineers and billionaire investors. They plan to create a fuel depot in space by 2020 by using water from asteroids, splitting it to liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for rocket fuel. They launched two test satellites to orbit

Mail was successfully delivered via rocket in 1931 by German engineer Reinhold Tiling. The project never gained traction, however, because Tiling died in 1933 as a result from injuries sustained during a fuel explosion in his workshop.

The Rocketdyne F-1 engine was the largest single nossle rocket engine ever used. It had 1.5 million pounds of thrust and needed a 55000 hp turbine engine just to drive its fuel pumps. The Saturn V rocket used 5 of them to get men on the moon.

Area 51 has a neighbor site similarly named, Area 25, and it's where black Project NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) was developed.

Each of the Apollo Saturn V rocket's 5 first-stage engines required a 55,000-horsepower fuel pump, equivalent to more than 60 supercar engines, and had to withstand temperatures ranging from 1,500 °F (820 °C) to −300 °F (−184 °C). Combined, the first stage put out 7.5 million pounds of thrust.

Jack Parsons, a pioneering rocket engineer who helped found NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, studied the mystic arts under Aleister Crowley, mentored L. Ron Hubbard before he founded Scientology, and eventually died in a mysterious chemical explosion in his home laboratory in 1952.

The Saturn V rocket burns up to 15 tons of kerosene and liquid oxygen fuel per second, and uses the power equivalent of 30 diesel locomotive engines just to pump all that fuel.

In the 1960's NASA Successfully Developed and Tested Nuclear Rocket Engines Called NERVA Which Were to be Used for a Planned Manned Mars Mission in 1978 that Never Flew

The Mongolian Empire used foreign technology in their weapons, among which were arrows propelled by small rocket engines

When the engineering team behind the moon rocket, Saturn V, retired; important knowledge on how the rocket worked was lost. Today it is practically impossible to rebuild it.

The airplane with the longest wingspan in the world is the Stratolaunch at 385 feet. It has two separate fuselages, six 747 engines, and is designed to send rockets into orbit.

NASA engineers used slide rules to build the rockets and plan the mission that landed Apollo 11 on the moon. It's said that Buzz Aldrin needed his pocket slide rule for last-minute calculations before landing

The initial launch was one of the tensest moments of Apollo missions, because the Saturn V Rocket was incapable of settling back on the launch pad if one or more engines failed to ignite, and the fully fueled rocket exploding would release energy equivalent to 2 kilotons of TNT

In 1974 the USAF fired a minuteman ICBM from a Galaxy cargo plane. The missile parachuted down to lower altitude before firing its rocket engines for launch.

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