High Performance Missile Upper Stage Liquid Rocket Engine

Rocket Propulsion Engineering Company (RP) will generate a preliminary engineeringdesign for a storable liquid-propellant rocket engine suitable for use as an upperstage engine for Navy Standard Missile or other suborbital or orbital applications.Propellants used will be hydrogen-peroxide and NavFuel, a fuel developed over 6 yearsby the Naval Air Warfare Center China Lake (NAWC). The engine will employ aregeneratively-cooled chamber, hypergolic (self-igniting) propellants, and directinjection of liquid hydrogen-peroxide, thus eliminating both the engine ignitionsystem and catalyst bed. RP will also identify key safety issues related to storageand utilization of hydrogen-peroxide based propellants in missile systems. The enginedesign will be completed to a level of sufficient detail to permit construction of aworking prototype engine during Phase 2, when it will be used in a hot-fire enginetest program at RP facilities. Storable liquid propellant rocket engines have advantages over solid motors used ininterceptor and target missile systems, launch vehicles, and spacecraft. Among theseare potentially higher performance, simple and unlimited restart capability, thepotential for throttling, storage/shipping in the inert condition, and lower cost.However, available liquid rocket engines have typically utilized very hazardouspropellants such as the extremely toxic MMH/NTO combination. Peroxide/hydrocarbonliquid engines offer a low-toxicity alternative to MMH/NTO, but peroxide engines oftraditional design have offered problems as well. Until now, conventional peroxideengines have been a poor alternative to more toxic systems since they requireproblematic and sensitive catalyst beds which limit performance, impose long enginestartup latencies, and prevent the use of stabilized peroxide (which contributes tosafe long-term peroxide storage). The hydrogen-peroxide/NavFuel RP rocket enginesolves these problems. This room-temperature storable propellant combination has verylow toxicity and will eliminate the use of both the engine catalyst bed and ignitionsystem. The resulting design simplification permits the use of high-concentration,high-performance peroxide stabilized for long-term storage, and provides for asimple, reliable, fast-starting engine.