First Aerospike Flight Test 'Only a Partial Success'
A joint academic/industry team conducted the first known flight
test of a powered liquid-propellant aerospike engine this past
Saturday, 20 September 2003. California State University, Long
Beach (CSULB) and Garvey Spacecraft Corporation, principal partners
in the California Launch Vehicle Education Initiative (CALVEIN),
successfully launched their Prospector 2 (P-2) research vehicle
using a 1,000 lbf LOX/ethanol aerospike engine designed and
developed by CSULB students.
The aerospike flight
test took place in the early afternoon under excellent weather
conditions at the Mojave Test Area that is owned and operated by
the non-profit Reaction Research Society. After a smooth countdown
and nominal engine ignition, the thirteen-foot long P-2 quickly
accelerated up a 60-ft launch rail and entered stable flight.
Several seconds later it abruptly pitched ninety degrees and
demonstrated unstable operation until finally transitioning into a
ballistic terminal descent. The subsequent impact with the desert
floor destroyed student payloads provided by a USC/JPL team and
another from Cerritos High School, but the aft section with the
aerospike survived relatively intact.
Burn Wasn't Symmetrical
Preliminary analysis indicates that the most probable cause for
the observed flight behavior is that part of the engine's graphite
exit outer ring experienced excessive and asymmetric erosion, which
in turn created a side thrust component.
Dr. Eric Besnard, CALVEIN director and associate professor at
CSULB, reports that the team will disassemble the Prospector 2 and
complete analysis of available data within the coming week. "We are
extremely satisfied with the initial results of the Prospector 2
aerospike flight test" says Dr. Besnard. "This mission had a
single, simple primary objective - get the vehicle into the air
using the liquid-propellant aerospike engine. We believe that our
success in achieving this goal represents a small but important
step in validating such engine technology for future reusable
launch systems. From a broader perspective, this kind of
hardware-based research and development, which has depended heavily
on student contributions, is essential for preparing tomorrow's
aerospace engineers who will be developing such vehicles."
This mission was actually the second for the Prospector 2, which
first flew in February 2002 with a standard bell-shaped ablative
engine chamber, and fourth overall for the CALVEIN team. John
Garvey of Garvey Spacecraft Corporation (Huntington Beach, CA)
notes that "We have already identified several areas for improving
the basic aerospike engine design. At the post-flight data review
we will collect any other lessons-learned from the flight test and
then will update our near-term flight test plans. As always, the
real challenge will be balancing what we would like to do with the
available resources. We could either run more static fire tests to
characterize the engine better or adapt the new Prospector 4 to
carry an updated aerospike. We will know more once we have had a
chance to open up the P-2 engine and take a look inside."
"Aerospike development is actually just one element of our
company's strategy to pursue the low-cost development and
validation of small launch vehicle technologies. We have another
re-usable flight vehicle – the Prospector 3 – back in
the CSULB lab that is our test bed for candidate thrust vector
control technologies. We have already flown it earlier this year
and the odds are good that we will be back at the MTA in several
months to conduct another flight test with it. The key for us is to
keep conducting these flights in combination with incremental
improvements."
In addition to Garvey Spacecraft Corporation, other corporate
contributors to the Prospector 2 flight test include Advanced
Composite Products and Technologies (ACPT) and Electro-Tech
Machining (ETM).
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