Randall Clague wrote:
I kinda get the impression that once the cat bed is warmed by a previous pulse, subsequent ones should not have significant uncatalyzed throughput, and PWM throttling keeps the bed hot. What's wrong with simply giving each engine a few 50 ms pulses ten or twenty seconds before liftoff? I know that the KISS vehicles have used a one-shot valve actuator on the launch rail, but POGO will inherently have fine control of the main valves. This is a feature, not a bug, and should be exploited.On Thu, 31 Oct 2002 23:53:58 -0800, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Tape heaters are inappropriate for Spike, since the propellant tank is part of the aeroshell and it needs to be very clean aerodynamicallyHm, I'd been assuming the tanks were not integral. If they are, then tape heaters get marginally less attractive.Honestly, I don't think we do for things like Spike and KISS, if we use silver catalyst.Oh, I was looking way down the road, for when Wallis Engineering or Masten Space Systems is flying out of Chicago or Moscow in winter. If heater tape is unattractive for aerodynamic reasons, then probably the next best thing is Jake's electric blanket. I thought about a cherry picker with a dunce cap and a couple big propane burners, and keep the whole vehicle warm, but you're going to want to tow the bird out to the rocket apron while you keep the peroxide tank warm, and a cherry picker runs too high a risk of bonking into the vehicle - that's a technical term, bonking - with the dunce cap. Not to mention the affinity your inevitable kerosene leaks will have for those propane burners... "Never mind, I'll catch a cab." "To Hong Kong?"It's something to keep in mind for POGO, since it pulses its engines and can much less afford the startup transient.Where do you imagine we'll fly POGO that's cold enough to matter?
Doug
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