One of the more wonderfully wacky launch vehicles designed in the early 1960’s was the Martin “RENOVA” (IIRC, from REusable NOVA). It was one of the large Nova concepts from 1962-63, capable of orbiting approximately one million pounds. What made it unusual was that it was an airbreather, was single stage (sorta) and was reusable (mostly).
It was a conical vehicle equipped with RENE-cycle engines (Rocket Engine Nozzle Ejector). In short, these were smallish conventional rocket engines wrapped in a duct. At launch the forward end of the duct would be open, allowing air through. The rockets would work as ejectors… the shear forces between the rocket exhaust and the air would drag the air along, increasing thrust. Once a sufficient altitude had been reached so that airbreathing was no longer of value, most of the duct would be simply dropped. The rockets would exhaust along the conical centerbody of the vehicle as a plug-cluster rocket engine. For re-entry and recovery, doors would close off the inlet. The conical forward payload shroud would be dispensed with, leaving a blunt forward face. The result was a ballistically recoverable booster which could survice entry and splashdown.
And here’s an unusual variant. The differences here are:
1: Extended aft body
2: Instead of doors, the entire shroud moves to close off the inlet. Magnificently complex.
9 Responses to “Martin RENOVA”
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Maybe not entirely practical, but certainly intriguing.
jim
What was the ISP when air augmented?
Scott, I don’t know if you or anyone else is interested in doing this,
but could you or someone else make an airflow diagram to show
air movement inside and out of this? I’m pretty sure of how it goes but just
for reference point. Thanks.
I read about airflow-enhanced rockets like this before, but only in regards to proposed designs. Is the increased thrust something that only works on paper, not in practice, or is it just that no one has tried to build one yet?
They work (hell, I built one, just not a very good one), but so far the complexity and added weight haven’t justified their use on much of anything. Airbreathign engines on space launchers are *usually* a special form of uselessness, since airbrethers work well at one flight condition (altitude & velocity), and increasingly less well at any other flight condition.
One variation is mixing fuel in with the extra airflow and burn it as a ramjet. NASA figured you’ld double the average isp from ground to orbit that way.
Interesting 1986/7 report on various AB-Augmented rocket cycles (mostly dealing with Ejector ram-rockets or Fan-Augmented RBCC but still has a good history section)
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADB121965&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
And here’s a thesis report on the performance of RBCC systems that might be helpful:
http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1754&context=utk_gradthes&sei-redir=1#search=“RENE,+Air+Augmented+Rocket+Engine+performance”
Randy
Randy that first link is not responding.
Mike,
I’m not sure why it’s not working I tried the link again and it worked fine for me. It MAY be because I’m using a government computer 🙂
The AD number to look up is: ADB121965
The title is:
“Air Augmented Rocket Propulsion Systems” You could try googling it or another web-search program.
Randy