A short while ago, Comet Aerospace was very much interested in building a Full-Flow Staged combustion cryogenic rocket engine, powered by Methane plus Liquid Oxygen.
We made a very detailed plan. We had specified our engine down to the last screw.
We never proceeded to built it since I am not fully convinced of the business case to built it yet. But I can share of the work we did. I cannot disclose our full design, but below I have attached the first injector test rig that we had planned.
This is for testing and qualification of the fuel + oxidizer injector into the combustion chamber.
We first decided to make a gas gas model →
Due to the very
Cryogernic engines require propellant to be stored at cryo temperatures (like -200 degree C). This means they can’t be stored for very long. As such cyogenic engines are only useful for orbital launches, and not missiles
Then moved to injector design for full cryo
Why did we not built it?
re-usability is overhyped
My Views on orbital launch vehicles, and re-usability
SpaceX has popularised the concept of making rockets re-usable, and everyone in the space industry (outside and in India) seems to think that is the holy grail.
But I think re-usable are just somehting that Elon Must has sold to be world, but it's actually stupid.
Nobody actually knows if the launch cost of SpaceX is as low as they claim to be, and if the cost has actually come down bcoz of re-usability. Given the merger of SpaceX with AI, we don't actually know the launch cost even though SpaceX is a public company.
The cost of launch has multple parts -
Cost of people Cost of ground infrastrcture - land and capex Cost of the rocket - strcutures and engines Cost of fuel Cost of recovery - ocean barges, re-furbishment and all