Forum: Technology

Starting in November 2001, Project RASCAL focused on creating new space vehicles for launching satellites. Among those ideas were converting F-106s and F-14s by using liquid oxygen and water injection to quadruple the engine thrust. Recently, all focus has been on the Pratt & Whitney F100 Engines as used on the F-15 among others. Using this "Mass Injection Pre-Compressor Cooling" method, Space fighters could no longer be the stuff of science fiction, if the Defense Department could realize it. Check out these sites to start.

http://ervextrafiles.homestead.com/RASCALhomePage.html
http://www.tour2space.com/archives/f-14lv/f-14-st.htm

Any thoughts?

F-16.net Sponsor

Elite 1K Joined: May 26, 2005 - 08:39 PM Posts: 1496

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/rascal.htm
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/09223top.xml

I don't see anything about quadrupling engine thrust. The idea (as I understand it) behind mass injection is to "get slightly better than sea-level thrust [at] Mach 3 at 100,000 ft" (from the AvWeek article).

The idea of RASCAL is to deliver light payloads (around 50-100kg) on either a ballistic trajectory or low earth orbit. The idea is not to have F-15s flying around in space.

I'm just saying. With this technology, it's possible for space fighters to exist...

VigilanteAgumon wrote:

I'm just saying. With this technology, it's possible for space fighters to exist...

Yeah, look at all the space experts we have and you still have a 1 in 50 chance of being a class A mishap on a manned space flight. I'll pass. Laughing

Elite 1K Joined: May 26, 2005 - 08:39 PM Posts: 1496

And I'm just saying with this technology it isn't possible. The goal of the program is to use an aircraft in a zoom climb as the first stage booster for a mini satellite ala the F-15 ASAT program. It is interesting, but by no means is it putting aircraft into orbit.

And elp, yeah the Shuttle has... issues. It'd be nice if NASA wasn't funded by people who see it as a jobs program. Sad

Bah, project Dark Horse was much better. Air to air propelent transfer, on a rocket powered fighter sized viehicle. Google it.

-MArk

NVgdude, your right, the other project was better. A little correction though, the project was called Black Horse/Colt.

space_monkey wrote:

NVgdude, your right, the other project was better. A little correction though, the project was called Black Horse/Colt.

Damn I should know that. That's what I get for not verifying before posting.

-MArk

I can't find anything of Black Horse or Black Colt...

Elite 1K Joined: May 26, 2005 - 08:39 PM Posts: 1496

http://www.risacher.org/bh/

Active Member Joined: Jan 10, 2005 - 07:58 AM Posts: 137

Try the free spaceflight simulator called Orbiter before deciding if space fighters are relatively simple. I learned that pretty much every movie ever made that had to do with space and futuristic vehicles forgot about old man Newton. Want to go 14 billion miles an hour? Make sure you have retrorockets just as powerful to help you stop (that or be ready to do a retrograde flip to stop in time). Plus there's the maddening fact that unlike Luke Skywalker or Captain Picard, you can't just zip over any part of the planet you want while in orbit unless you have a looooooooot of fuel. Definitely one day, but not this week Sad

Give it a shot!
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

VigilanteAgumon wrote:

Among those ideas were converting F-106s and F-14s by using liquid oxygen and water injection to quadruple the engine thrust.

Ummm. I'm no engineer but if you quadrupled the thrust in almost any modern day fighter engine, is it possible they couldn't handle the pressure and shell out or blow up? I'd think they'd have to invent a whole new engine, something with super strong construction

F16z28 wrote:

VigilanteAgumon wrote:

Among those ideas were converting F-106s and F-14s by using liquid oxygen and water injection to quadruple the engine thrust.

Ummm. I'm no engineer but if you quadrupled the thrust in almost any modern day fighter engine, is it possible they couldn't handle the pressure and shell out or blow up? I'd think they'd have to invent a whole new engine, something with super strong construction

Presumably one would use the greatest amount of mass injection at altitued where the atmospheric working mass is less.

On the gripping hand, anyone read this weeks AvLeak?

http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/c ... 0606p1.xml

NVGdude wrote:

Presumably one would use the greatest amount of mass injection at altitued where the atmospheric working mass is less.

On the gripping hand, anyone read this weeks AvLeak?

Quadrupling the thrust of a current engine means one of several things:
1) You can change the nozzle at the back. This will only be so effective though and you can get weird occurances if you're not careful. These include separated flow, over and under expanded flows. The greater area at the exit will also cause larger drag because of the size to get them to 4x the thrust.

2) Increase fuel flow. This would raise the temperature inside the engine. Unfortunately, you'll probably melt the turbomachinery downstream of the burner.

3) Extra Afterburner stuff. This is ok, but you can easily melt the surrounding equipment. That and you'll burn ENOURMOUS amounts of fuel to get the desired result.

The best option would be a combination of these, but it still wouldn't quadruple the thrust. Also, you have to take a rocket to get to space because there's no such thing as one stage to orbit. Thus, what good are these engines going to do you? You have no air in space so why not just use rocket engines. Also, how are you getting back from orbit. Answer: you're dead, you can't survive reentry. Anyway, these are ideas but space fighters are not reasonable.

Forum: Technology

Space Fighters within our grasp?