Mass-Produced Hollow Cathodes Will Cost Less

A commercial version of the NASA plasma-contactor hollow-cathode assembly (PC HCA) has been developed. The NASA PC HCA is a highly reliable hollow discharge cathode that is the most thoroughly...

Software for Setting Up Equipment for Testing Rocket Engines

A computer program has been developed to shorten the time needed to set up electronic instrumentation for a hot-fire test of a rocket engine. The instrumentation in question is a...

Hybrisol Rocket Engines

"Hybrisol" denotes a proposed rocket engine that would contain hybrid and solid-propellant parts within a single combustion chamber. ["Hybrid" as used here denotes a type of rocket engine in which a solid fuel is...

Experiment on Reducing Drag on an Aerospace Launch Vehicle

Current proposed shapes for single-stage-to-orbit vehicles like the Lockheed-Martin X-33 and VentureStar reusable launch vehicle have extremely large base areas when compared with...

Small Hybrid Rocket Engines Fabricated via X-Ray Lithography

Small hybrid rocket engines of a proposed type would burn specially shaped hollow cylinders of solid fuel containing slanted oxygen-injection channels, as shown in the figure....

Model of Interacting O₂ Drops Surrounded by H₂ at High Pressure

A mathematical model has been developed to predict the behavior of mutually interacting drops of a first fluid surrounded by a second fluid, under quiescent conditions at...

Model of a Drop of O₂ Surrounded by H₂ at High Pressure

A mathematical model has been developed to predict the behavior of an isolated drop of a first fluid surrounded by a second fluid, under quiescent conditions at supercritical...

Passive Optical Measurement of Velocity in a Luminous Flow

A segmented-image emission velocimeter (SIEVE) is an optical instrument for measuring the velocity of a luminous turbulent flow. More specifically, it measures a component of flow...

Improved Alloy for Fabrication of Combustion Chambers by VPS

An alloy of 88Cu/8Cr/4Nb (numbers indicate atomic percentages) has been proposed for use in fabricating rocket-engine combustion chambers by vacuum plasma spraying (VPS). Relative...

Automated System for Acting on Findings From Inspections

The Automated Nonconformance System, based at Stennis Space Center, is a computer network dedicated to administration of inspections and repairs of rocket engines. This automated...

Endoscopic Shearography Inspection

An imaging method to detect flaws in composite pressure vessels used in the aerospace industry has been developed. Solid-rocket-motor casings and fuel or oxidizer tanks for liquid rocket motors can now be...

Equations of State for Fluid Mixtures at High Pressures

A method that includes the use of modified equations of state has been developed to enable noniterative, efficient computation of the thermodynamic behaviors of gases and liquids at...

Phase-Synchronized Enhancement Method for Engine Diagnostics

A diagnostic signal-analysis technique, called the Phase Synchronized Enhancement Method (PSEM), has been developed. This method allows NASA engineers to retrieve any unique...