Posted on 04/21/2016 12:22:55 PM PDT by Kaslin
The Atlas II launch vehicle used RS-56 engines, which topped out at 207,000 lbf of thrust.
The RD-180 makes 860,000 lbf plus of thrust in a package that’s only slightly larger.
The proposed replacements from American companies will produce 500,000-550,000 at best.
The Russians simply made (and make) more powerful liquid-fueled engines, partially because their solid-fuel rocket tech was pretty bad. US rocket development was crippled by Clinton’s Peace Dividend and environmental laws that simply made it too expensive for many to develop new engines.
Thanks.
Can’t believe with the actual engines and plans we could not reverse engineer production of more units with modern manufacturing techniques.
at 1.5 MILLION lbs of thrust per engine....
That’s what they’re trying to do with the Rocketdyne F-1B - but it has been the better part of a decade now and we still haven’t got one on a test stand yet let alone flown it. All we have are some scale models and one gas generator test last year.
How much larger is the shuttle main engine? Looking at wiki, one RS-25 puts out 418K pounds of thrust. Could two of those fit on an Atlas airframe? That would be 900+K pounds of American thrust. We wouldn’t get it back, of course, so it may be cost prohibitive.
Just a thought. Of course, I guess the Atlas would have to be modified/converted to burning hydrogen instead of kerosene.
The fuel conversion is the problem - RP is far more energy dense than hydrogen. The Atlas would need to have a huge tank added to it just to duplicate existing capability and that would add all sorts of problems.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.