33 Responses

1. Expander Cycle Diagram. Heat from combustion powers the fuel and oxidizer pumps.
   
   “In an expander cycle, the fuel is heated before it is combusted, usually with waste heat from the main combustion chamber. As the liquid fuel passes through coolant passages in the walls of the combustion chamber, it undergoes a phase change into a gaseous state. The fuel in the gaseous state expands through a turbine using the pressure differential from the supply pressure to the ambient exhaust pressure to initiate turbopump rotation. This can provide a bootstrap starting capability as is used on the Pratt & Whitney RL10 engine. This bootstrap power is used to drive turbines that drive the fuel and oxidizer pumps increasing the propellant pressures and flows to the rocket engine thrust chamber. After leaving the turbine(s), the fuel is then injected with the oxidizer into the combustion chamber and burned to produce thrust for the vehicle.”

   Here is the detailed propellant flow schematic from the Pratt & Whitney RL10A-3 Design Report (dated Feb 28, 1966):
   

   It burns blue. Here’s a 2009 NASA experiment with the Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine (CECE) at full throttle (video):

   

   This RL10 engine is fuelled by a mixture of -182.8° Celsius liquid oxygen and -252.8° Celsius liquid hydrogen. The engine components are super-cooled to similar low temperatures. As CECE burns its frigid fuels, gas composed of hot steam is produced and propelled out the nozzle creating thrust. The steam is cooled by the cold engine nozzle, condensing and eventually freezing at the nozzle exit to form icicles.

2. Detail of the 360 fuel lines:

   

   The blue frame is a swivel to allow the motor to be inspected at multiple angles. Here is the turbo-pump complex:

   

3. Nice elegant design. They took this method to the next level with hypersonic test jets that used waste heat in the nozzle to ‘crack’ the long chain hydrocarbon fuel into smaller chains for combustion.

   You’ll have to start giving tours of the collection soon. Your private museum of aeronautic/astronautic history is impressive.

4. So, what you are saying is that the engine cools the steam back to subzero temps, but if it didn’t cool itself, it would produce enough heat to melt the nozzle?
   That’s impressive.
   Is only the outer edge of the escaping gas cooled, and the middle region left hot, or does the entire output get cooled?

5. Intriguing design. For those of you at DFJ, beware…..If Steve has installed this on a ground floor of the building, he may be planning to move you and the entire building into space. Now that’s taking business to "the next level"!

6. Quite a step from Goddard’s first use of liquid fuel;
   http://www.space.com/images/goddard_rocket_03.jpg

   I think it went sideways 700 feet.

7. Balls 19?

8. Fancy that.

9. So there are one or two thousand feet of cooling lines there, in 360 discrete loops. swinging from ambient (or higher) to -253C, and under pressure higher than the combustion chamber: hundreds of PSI. A primary design goal is light weight (so thin wall tubing). And failure of any one of those tubes is likely to be catastrophic to the vehicle.

   It is astonishing that this engine is both so efficient and so reliable, with those considerations.

10. Yes..that seems amazing.I guess the small size of each individual tube keeps the stress on the metal tubing (? steel ?) low.
    Hydraulics expert please !

11. Looks impressive, the "heart" of the spaceship:)

12. Nice piece of furniture! The UMich Aerospace Engineering Dept has one on display as well in their François-Xavier Bagnoud Building. I was surprised how small they are.

13. Dave: Get a load of this: the double-tapered tubes were made by LaFiell Company which developed the process for forming golf club shafts! We hear of NASA tech spinoffs life Teflon, but how about golf spinoffs to NASA?

    The tube walls were 12/1000 of an inch thick, and filled with wax during bending to form. In the combustion chamber, the tubes are round, but they are pressed tight to allow interleaving and pinching up above. Then the wax was removed and each tube was classified for its flow characteristics. Ten stations measured the circumference of the resulting tube to .0001 and from a pool of 3x overproduction, the computer picked the best possible set of tubes from 6000 dimensions to ensure uniform cooling around each chamber.

    At the beginning of the project, hydrogen was considered a dangerous and unpredictable fuel, and little of it was available for research. Werner Von Braun told Dick Mulready, the first project engineer for the RL10, “It was our trip to Florida to see the RL10 firing that gave me confidence to use hydrogen for Apollo.” – From p.78 of

    

    Here is a stamping, perhaps supporting the premise that this was the second one built:

    

    I was wondering how this got into private hands and why there was such an elaborate tilt swivel display built for it. Perhaps it was used for display at P&W, and then disposed (often this is how employees get access to early artifacts).

14. I don’t know where you get this stuff Steve!
    Looks like a shower head !!

15. Whats P&W by the way..

16. Pratt & Whitney, the manufacturer. It is a shower head of sorts… if you are running hot and need a cold shower =)

    I recently learned that a new one of these costs $38M !!!

17. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson]
    I’m now reading the book by Mulready and I admire even more those engineers at P&W.
    It is an outstanding engine even today!

18. Where did you procure this RL-10? I’ve been building the cryogenic valves for RL-10 for 13 years now. BTW.. Assy 2056189, Serial No 2 doesn’t necessarily mean that this is engine #2. I can tell from the pictures that it is 60’s or 70’s vintage. I have many contacts at PWR, will investigate.

19. It came from an ex-employee. Curious to hear whatever you can learn about this artifact. Do you know if PW built the metal swivel for display purposes? Email me at SteveJ@boxbe.com and we can connect.

20. Sent you an email this morning from work.

21. Some updates on the research into the serial numbers:
    Not all parts in the RL-10 are serialized, if they are it’s called out on the print. All S/N’s on the RL-10 are issued by Pratt to whatever vendor makes the part and they are all three letters then three numbers i.e. DXC 733. By the Pratt marking specification, vendors are allowed to use sequence numbers if the part is not serialized. Sequence numbers are traditionally 1,2,3,etc.

    S778 is the stamp of the assembler. The S/N is JB9.
    S-4051 IP8-2 may be the engine number.
    P/N 2056189 is no longer in the PWR database.

22. Really nice work. The composition is cool and the processing is very nice.

23. Terrific shot!!!! Love the long corridor

24. Love the depth to this shot Mike, awesome lines!

25. Gorgeous HDR Michael! love the textures, the composition it’s also amazing, Congrats!!!

26. Great job Mike. Abandoned places are always awesome.

27. What a cool place ! Awesome work !

28. Nice bit of color. I especially like the red light at the very end.

29. Great shot and awesome series Mike. I love the lights and shadows in this image. Have a great weekend.

30. Love the mix of cool and warm tones.

31. Amazing color and composition.

32. I like this one a lot! The orange door(?) at the end has made the scene!

33. Cool shot Mike! Looks like an interesting place! Awesome work!