Resources

Resources

This page gathers available documentation on the numerous subjects linked the project, including rocket science, turbofans, aerodynamics, amateur rocketry and SSTO.

An internal page has been created containing useful formulas related to thermodynamics and aerodynamics. Another page contains all heat transfer-related material.

Similar projects

• Opennautics (European project) develops a hybrid engine for an amateur rocket, all open source.
• WikiSat (European project, mostly Spanish) work on pico satellites and their launcher, mainly a rocket launched from a balloon (a rockoon).

Web pages

A more complete and multi-domain list of links is available on the amateur rocketry website, as well as on the ARocket mailing list, subscription available on this same site. Most useful links are below:

• An important nasaspaceflight forum thread where ideas on micro-rocketry to orbit are discussed and shared.

• A kind of spin-off of the above thread is the Orbital Aspirations weblog. It was recently created by Ed LeBouthillier and is already filled with lots of information on scaling down rocket equations to micro-rocketry, SSTO, reference papers, news of the domain and so on.

• Another blog talking about SSTO and air-to-orbit: Selenian Boondocks.

• Another blog is dedicated to SSTO: Polymath/Exoscientist.

• A scientist blog with some occasional rocketry: Gravity Loss.

• Robert A. Braeunig's website on rocket and space technology, including a nice forum.

• Nozzle design.

• XCOR cryogenic piston pumps (for LOX) on XR-4K5, a 1,800 lbf LOX/kerosene Engine.

• History of the R7 (soyuz rocket) and rocket engines issues prior to it.

• Ed Williams' Aviation page Flight dynamics and formulas about aviation in general. A good start to understand flight controls. Link found on this unreasonable rocket blog entry about UAV.

Lectures

• Unified Propulsion MIT lecture. Lots of interesting stuff, especially in page 9 "Energy Exchange with Moving Blades".

• Thermodynamics and Propulsion MIT lecture. Lots of interesting stuff too, especially the third part on propulsion.

Books (online links)

Multi-domain

• Aerothermodynamics of gas turbine and rocket propulsion by Gordon C. Oates. 1997.

Rocket engines

• How to design, build and test small liquid-fuel rocket engines by Rocketlab / China lake, Calif. 1967. Local copy of the full book. Backup is here.

• Rocket propulsion elements by George Paul Sutton and Oscar Biblarz. 7th edition, 2001. Very complete.

• Modern engineering for design of liquid-propellant rocket engines by Dieter K. Huzel, David H. Huang and Harry Arbit. 1992.

• The Design of Liquid Propellant Rockets (full book) 2nd edition by Huzel and Huang, 1971.

Specific topics of rocket egines:

• Cryogenic engineering by Thomas M. Flynn. 2005.

• Liquid rocket engine combustion instability by Vigor Yang and William E. Anderson. 1995.

• Liquid rocket thrust chambers: aspects of modeling, analysis, and design by Vigor Yang. 2004.

Turbines and turbofans

• Jet engines: fundamentals of theory, design, and operation by Klaus Hünecke, 1997.

• The history of North American small gas turbine aircraft engines by Richard A. Leyes and William A. Fleming. 1999.

• Turbofan by Frederic P Miller, Agnes F Vandome and John McBrewster. 2009.

• Jet propulsion: a simple guide to the aerodynamics and thermodynamic design and performance of jet engines, by N. A. Cumpsty. 2003.

• Gas turbine theory by H. I. H. Saravanamuttoo, Gordon Frederick Crichton Rogers and Henry Cohen. 2001.

• Gas turbine engineering handbook by Meherwan P. Boyce. 2002.

Other: Thermodynamics, Aerodynamics, general physics

• Applied Aerodynamics: A Digital Textbook by Desktop Aeronautics, Inc. 2007.

• Thermodynamics for Beginners, with worked examples by R. Shanthini. 2006.

Videos (youtube links)

• SSTO presentation at SpaceUp conference.

• How are made turbine blades from Discovey channel "How it's made" show.

• Using propellers to get into space by John Powell in SpaceVidCast.

• Video documentaries on turbine engines, from a turbine renovator in Canada, probably the best resource on the Web for seing what's inside real engines.