AFRL: Behind the Scenes
Watch this video to go behind the scenes at the AFRL Rocket Lab with Nils Sedano, Liquid Engines Technical Advisor. The video explores the test stands, chambers, and facilities which aim to deliver ground-breaking rocket technology.
Transcript
00:00:08 [Music] before that one small step before the eagle landed before Apollo headed to the Moon a 363 ft 62 million pound vehicle had to leave the surface of the Earth owering that vehicle were five F1 rocket engines that began their life at the Air Force rocket labs in [Music]
00:00:52 California it was a very very large engine and it needed to accomplish a very difficult task so the the engine became more prone to that combustion stability this is when the energy that is being combusted inside of this chamber creates a runaway effect where the uh the energy cannot be contained unfortunately at the time there wasn't much computer modeling and there wasn't
00:01:14 much even just understanding of the physics going on the combustion mechanics Etc it was an educated guest to figure out different designs and try them out some of the baffle designs became uh very complex and and as it turned out the the baffle design that they settled on uh didn't have to have such complexity after all um but it it was a bit of a trial and error actually
00:01:37 just to find the solution to work construction began on five different uh F1 test stands uh on the ridge out here so in case one blew up they could run right right off the bat tomorrow uh try to try a fix and not lose schedule there in those days people were uh testing here uh uh 24/7 practically basically as soon as you built a a specific component called an injector out in the Machine
00:02:04 Shop it was taken out to the test stand and and run and sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't and right every single day and new designs coming in you every configuration and permutation that you could imagine um uh was tried they were able to find a design that worked that uh then transferred over to the flight engines the f1s uh themselves which were uh tested out here in their
00:02:28 full flight configuration uh the injector design um are common in many uh other types of engines that we still use today um those type of injector designs have been improved upon of course but at their core they're still the same uh designs the Air Force research laboratory has continued to unveil groundbreaking rocket technology such as
00:02:53 the affordable responsive modular rocket Advanced spacecraft energetic non-toxic fuel the rap rapid energetics and advanced rocket manufacturing project and the rotating detonation rocket engine with the constantly updated and very capable test stands and Chambers afrl is positioned to support the United States continued dominance in space [Applause]