PETER BECK ROCKET LAB GENERATOR

Additionally, since the second stage is so insanely light, allowing it to be high performance, it is very cheap to manufacture.

Beck noted that as they were going through the Neutron design, they started looking into a reusable upper stage, but because the first stage is the majority of costs of the rocket it made little sense. In the same vane of the vehicle being “one large engineering compromise,” the second stage is “hung from” the first stage. Since CH 4 offers high thrust with good ISP, while creating no soot, the engine can be rapidly reused without needing to be cleaned. This likely means that Rocket Lab has chosen to use a coaxial injector of some sort, but this has not been confirmed by Beck or Rocket Lab.īeck also noted that there would be a large amount of 3D printed parts on the engine, which is an interesting juxtaposition to both the Raptor engine and Astra’s rocket 3, where they are trying to remove as much 3D printing as possible to reduce costs.Īccording to Beck, the primary reason why Rocket Lab chose CH 4 and LOx for Neutron was reuse. He noted they have already decided on an injector design, stating that there is only one clear choice for a gas-liquid interaction the CH 4 will be a gas by the time it enters the combustion chamber as it boils off in the regenerative cooling channels and the liquid oxygen will remain in liquid form.

This is similar to the engine that Tom Mueller wanted to build for Starship, which was essentially just a CH 4 powered version of the Merlin engine that is used to power the Falcon 9 rocket.

PETER BECK ROCKET LAB GENERATOR

Because of this, they decided to pursue an open cycle gas generator engine that runs on CH 4 (liquid methane) and LOx (liquid oxygen), which due to the simple cycle would reduce development time. The isogrid structure of the Atlas V tanks (Credit: ULA) Archimedes Engine:īeck opened up discussion about the Archimedes engine by stating that because the structure of Neutron is so light, they do not need to push the boundaries of propulsion. This decision drove a large amount of the engineering compromises, such as the fairing design. Rocket Lab started off initial design requirement was that Neutron must be able to be reused in 24 hours, despite Beck stating that he doesn’t think that Rocket Lab will ever reuse a Neutron booster in 24 hours. However, with carbon fiber this is not needed since it is so stiff and light: for the same relative mass, you can have a significantly thicker, and therefore stronger, structure with carbon than with steel. On larger rockets, buckling is generally prevented with either stringers (longitudinal support structures) in the stage or an isogrid structure. It was noted by Beck that on a lot of larger launch vehicles one of the primary battles is fighting tank buckling. “It all comes down to mass at the end of the day, it is the biggest challenge you need to solve.” He points out that this is where materials play such a massive role: having an ultra-light carbon structure allows for Rocket Lab to deal with dynamic heating later in flight and add more structure to the vehicle, both of which are advantageous for a reusable launch vehicle. Vehicle Design:īeck describes a rocket as “one giant engineering compromise,” adding that every rocket design is going to have downsides, echoing Musk’s “all designs are wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong” attitude. Peter Beck describes the Neutron process as taking all of the lessons learned from Electron and incorporating those into something that he believes is going to be very important for the future of rocketry. On December 14, 2021, Tim Dodd had the opportunity to interview Rocket Lab founder, CEO, and CTO Peter Beck about their upcoming medium-lift launch vehicle, Neutron.

Peter beck rocket lab