Antares e.V.
20 kN Testbed
Lander
100 kN Testbed
Hybrid Launcher
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- Details
- Feasibility
Hybrid Rocket Launcher
We are working on satellite launcher preleminary designs. The designs all base on tough hybrid rocket or liquid methane rocket technology. We dont't use hydrogene technology in our designs, because we think this extreme dangerous and unreliable propellant isn't the way to cheap space travel.In the picture you can see a rocket design by Ralf Schaefer, one of our members. It's a small three stage launcher system that is based on a single LOX/Butadiene engine with 7 metric tons thrust, each.
In the first stage 9 engines are bundled and use a single cubic tank (and on top 8 high pressure vessels for the inlet pressure of a SINGLE turbopump), they produce together 63 metric tons thrust for lift off. The second stage is realised by four strap on boosters with gas pressure feed systems and together 28 metric tons thrust. The third stage uses a single engine and carries besides its gas pressure feed system, its roll control unit, the avionic compartment for the entire rocket, the payload and its shroud.
This design is a totaly new approach for using one relatively small engine in three stage rockets. It bases on the high reliable solid units of the hybrid rocket engines. The burning chambers are actually tire rubber tubes with nozzles at the back end and contain no moving parts, so one can cluster them without loosing any system reliability. The liquid more complicated units of the bundled hybrid engines are united to bigger units wherever it makes sense. So a simple but reliable cluster rocket emerges. This is new and important, because former low cost cluster rockets had reliability problems.
Antares Raumfahrttechnik e.V. and Mr. Schaefer won't claim any patent for this design and give the principle design idea free for peaceful use.
The rocket launches 500kg payload into LEO and is thought as a competitor to small civil launcher systems like e.g. ESA's Vega, Orbital's Pegasus and Taurus, Cosmos International's Launcher and even to cheap conversion rockets like Eagle, Rockot, Dnepr.