PRELIMINARY DESIGN STUDY OF STAGED COMBUSTION CYCLE ROCKET ENGINE FOR SPACELINER HIGH-SPEED PASSENGER TRANSPORTATION CONCEPT

The revolutionary ultrafast passenger transportation system SpaceLiner is under investigation at DLR in the EU-funded study Future high-Altitude high-Speed Transport 20XX. SpaceLiner’s configuration is being amended continuously, and SpaceLiner7 is the brand new version at the point of August in 2012. SpaceLiner7 is two staged reusable launch vehicle with liquid rocket engines. SpaceLiner Main Engine (SLME) is required to have high performance for the total system to be feasible, and also to be easy on the environment for frequent launches. Therefore staged combustion cycle (SC) rocket engine with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen (LH2/LOX) is accounted to be promising for SLME. SLME has same geometry of thrust chamber in both stages for cost reduction and reliability enhancement, whereas they differ in the interface conditions and the nozzle expansion ratio for the optimum flight performance. This report describes the engine cycle analysis and the component predesign of SLME with DLR developed codes and NASA developed Two-Dimensional Kinetic Thrust Chamber Analysis Computer Program (TDK). That includes the tradeoff study between Full-Flow Staged Combustion cycle (FFSC) and Fuel Rich Staged Combustion cycle (FRSC), tradeoff study between 2 Fuel Turbo Pump (FTP)s FFSC and 1 FTP FFSC, the thrust chamber including nozzle pre-design, and the turbo machinery pre-sizing. They show SLME’s feasibility and subject to be researched in the future.