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Building a rocket engine from scratch

blog.ablspacesystems.com

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31–40 of 96 posts

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#31

Post by beambot »

Horffupolde wrote: post #25
buescher wrote: post #24

NASA's report server is a national treasure, especially the material from the 50s and 60s that he references. Some of the most crisp and succinct technical writing you'll find, and you can infer a lot about how they ran projects. Declassified NRO reports are also very good - you can see the Lockheed Skunk Works principles in action. Example: https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/WS117...

English is great for technical writing.

It probably helps that you have to be exceedingly thoughful about every keystroke & word less you need to completely retype the document or page!

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#32

Post by scoot »

beambot wrote: post #31
Horffupolde wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is great for technical writing.

It probably helps that you have to be exceedingly thoughful about every keystroke & word less you need to completely retype the document or page!

"lest" perhaps?

At least you don't have to retype the whole sentence. ;)

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#33

Post by mhh__ »

beambot wrote: post #31
Horffupolde wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is great for technical writing.

It probably helps that you have to be exceedingly thoughful about every keystroke & word less you need to completely retype the document or page!

I'd have imagined you wrote a draft, corrected with the red pen, and then sent it off to (presumably) an army of women to do it properly.

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#34

Post by mhh__ »

buescher wrote: post #24

NASA's report server is a national treasure, especially the material from the 50s and 60s that he references. Some of the most crisp and succinct technical writing you'll find, and you can infer a lot about how they ran projects. Declassified NRO reports are also very good - you can see the Lockheed Skunk Works principles in action. Example: https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/WS117...

Lots of academic and engineering things from back then are great.

I have an incomplete set of the radlab textbooks. They're still useful even today, and have a really careful pace to them because they were written for a generation for whom electricity was still relatively new.

One of the things that is a real shame is just how artfully bound those old books are. Leather, thick but smooth paper, etc.

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#35

Post by nothercastle »

quartesixte wrote: post #16
psunavy03 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valuing "completely obsessed" employees is a great way to build a company with toxic burnout culture. Some people want lives outside of work and are still good at their jobs.

Or some people are so good at their jobs that even while being completely obsessed, they still have great work-life balance. I interact with a lot of people like the author in the article from this industry. And while yes, their worklife balance skews "work", they all have interesting hobbies and find time to hang out with friends, go on adventures, and live a pretty full life. Unless you're on the Starship team at S…

Employees who are married to their job are the best employees. Just like in a real relationship you can treat them like shit and they mostly stay married

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#37

Post by aaronblohowiak »

quartesixte wrote: post #17
avmich wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Breed, from Unreasonable Rocket team - https://x.com/unrocket - mentioned, a decade or so ago, that he printed some aluminum engines for regenerative cooling by hydrogen peroxide for ~$1000 . Another story from http://rocketmoonlighting.blogspot.com/2010/ is about a small engine cooled with nitrous oxide - and manufactured entirely on personal money, also quite some time ago. I think these numbers are still indi…

Aluminum is magnitudes cheaper than Inconel. And since volume is cubic, and pricing mostly on based on powder weight, you are about an order of magnitude or two off for the size of engine ABL is producing here.

Would $100,000 still be a “steal” for all that? (Especially with repeatability and nimbleness) ?

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#38

Post by adrianN »

Horffupolde wrote: post #25
buescher wrote: post #24

NASA's report server is a national treasure, especially the material from the 50s and 60s that he references. Some of the most crisp and succinct technical writing you'll find, and you can infer a lot about how they ran projects. Declassified NRO reports are also very good - you can see the Lockheed Skunk Works principles in action. Example: https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/foia/declass/WS117...

English is great for technical writing.

I think English has too many ambiguities to be well suited for technical writing. There are efforts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English but they don't have a lot of adoption.

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#40

Post by mdorazio »

Great post on building extremely complex hardware from scratch.

At the same time I hate to be that business guy, but both this blog post and the abl site are missing a good answer to my first question: Why? Given that SpaceX exists and is quickly approaching feasibility of Starship on top of Falcon, what is the primary goal of this rocket system? How will it compete? Who will its customers be? Is it getting its metric ton payload to orbit faster/cheaper/easier? Is this "from scratch" engine design superior to existing designs in some way? What is its current ISP? Is Jet-A + LOX a better fuel choice given expected mission parameters?

I'd love to see a blog post that tackles these kinds of questions.

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