Rocket science

[Enzo]

You have probably already heard they have recovered some of hte engines from the old Apollo mission boosters.

Here is a short article about it with some photos, from one of my engineering magazines.

http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/no ... cean-floor

[tubeswell]

Wow! A rocket engine collector! I guess it had to happen one day.

[Enzo]

I can already see the debates between collectors - liquid versus solid state. Some guy named Blastwell would be building his own rockets.

[tubeswell]

Rocket engine collectors forum?

[Enzo]

HI, first post. You guys seem to know a lot about rockets. I want to adapt my ESA boost module to a USA Agena launch system, without losing the orbital sustain. My question is whether it would be better to keep the original O-rings or upgrade to silicon???

Also, I have a telemeter, but I don't know which end to hook up for telemetry.

[tubeswell]

Hi first poster, welcome to the forum.

Forget about silicon o-rings - just so much snake-oil. As for the original o-rings, they might be fine, or they might not. Who can really say without a special o-ring x-ray machine to tell where the stress fractures are? - otherwise you really can't tell if they're still reliable or not under pressure. And even if you had one of those x-ray machines you have to be careful how you use it, or you could end up melting the o-rings out of shape. I have some NOS O-rings made in the heyday of O-rings. The have the inner and outer groove that is made to fit the original boosters. I might be able to let you have them for US$1M per booster set.

A telemeter is only as good as the last person who calibrated it. Despite what they say, most of this stuff isn't really rocket science - you can get away with rule-of-thumb, so long as you allow (say) 25% extra for slippage and error.