Ken Swank of Swank Aerospace attempted to static fire his first bi-liquid Nitrous and kerosene) rocket motor. The motor should develop 450 lbs of thrust at full throttle. The motor is throttle and is regentrivealy capable so the run time is as long as there are liquids to burn. The main chamber is made from solid copper with an aluminum outer jacket.The injector plate is copper as well. Here are some pictures of the motor:
Nov 4th 2006 Ken attempted to static test his motor. Don, and I went up to Ken's testing facility along with another friend Ken brought along.Ken had done a lot of work to prepare for the day by having several bottles of nitrous, a bottle of nitrogen as a boost for the nitrous, and a bottle of helium to boost the kerosene. We setup the electronics and hooked up the gas bottles. We tested the tanks and calibrated the systems. After about an 2 hour setup, we where ready to start filling the tanks. We got the kerosene filled and then started filling the nitrous. While that was filling we set the igniter and turned on the cameras. After everything was verified we counted down. The igniter lit and we turn the valve for both the kerosene and nitrous. The nitrous released a big white cloud, but the motor never lit. We reset for a second time, this time turning on and releasing the kerosene first then the nitrous. The kerosene lit but the nitrous put it out. We tried a third time and had the same problem. The USP battery was getting low so we had to quit for the day. After thinking about it for a while, we think we may have to add two smaller solenoid valves to inject smaller amount of both kerosene and nitrous since they seem to be flooding the system with too much liquid.
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