03-30-2011, 04:10 PM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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That was like drinking from a waterfall--but a tasty one! Thank you for posting all of those links.
The portions about monster solid motor applications (and their impracticability due to their great masses) explain an article I came across many years ago in an early 1960s issue of "Aviation Week & Space Technology." Aerojet was at that time exploring the concept of strap-on boosters and stages employing giant solid rocket motors; they would be erected on the launch pad *empty* and then be filled with solid propellant--at the launch pad! A new "gel-solid" propellant that Aerojet was working on was hoped to make such motors possible. It was to be pumped into the motor cases from tanker trucks and then be allowed to cure into case-bonded solid propellant. Determining the grain integrity and extracting the mandrels from the huge motors at the pad would have been significant problems, but what a concept for reloadable model rocket motors a gel-solid propellant would be, eh? :-)
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