At 01:47 AM 9/9/2002 -0700, David Masten wrote:
>On Mon, 2002-09-09 at 00:31, Pierce Nichols wrote:
>
> > Why not use a straight cylindrical outer skirt and put all of the
> > shape in the plug? The throat location is then obvious.
> >
>
>Cause then it would be too simple and I wouldn't have gotten to know
>TurboCAD as well. :-)
Fair enough. However, I think we should build the functional unit
as I described to lower the fabrication cost -- only one piece (the plug)
will need to be specially formed.
>Okay, good. I couldn't find many references, but the NASA-AIAA paper on
>parametric design of plug nozzles seemed to indicate worthwhile
>improvements between the very simple design and a more "refined" design.
The key question is not whether they provide a worthwhile
performance improvement in the general case, but whether they provide a
worthwhile improvement for the specific application contemplated, i.e.
Spike. Spike is not designed to be the highest performance monoprop
aerospike engine possible; it's designed to fly an aerospike engine in the
transonic and low supersonic region and gather concrete data on aerospike
flight behavior. That is all. All improvements contemplated should be
judged not on their merits in the general case but on their merits in
relation to accomplishing those core goals.
-p
Mars or Bust!
www.marssociety.com
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