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Monster Rocket Launches Today
A lot more than a dummy satellite is riding on the successful first flight of the super-sized Delta 4 Heavy rocket set to blast off today. The future of United States rocketry, and perhaps the nation's plans to send people to the moon and Mars, faces a major turning point when The Boeing Co. lights the three engines on the most powerful rocket launched from Cape Canaveral besides the Saturn 5 and the space shuttle. The thundering roar, which will be heard and felt for dozens of miles, will slowly lift the rocket off Pad 37B on a mission to prove Boeing's concept of strapping three Delta 4 core boosters together to create a launcher capable of delivering more cargo to orbit than NASA's shuttle... "We redesigned this engine with simplification in mind," said Mike Costas, a program manager for the RS-68 engine for Boeing's Rocketdyne division. "It's very simple to build." Yet, "it's the largest hydrogen-fueled rocket engine in the world," Costas said. What does that mean? Quite simply, more power. Each of the three engines create more than 660,000 pounds of thrust and 17 million horsepower. That's about the equivalent of 850 Boeing 747s. The engines are not exactly fuel-efficient either, consuming a ton of propellant per second or five tanker-trailer loads per minute... Hoping for eventual 150 ton payloads. (Insert 'Monster Island' joke here.) Posted by: Anonymoose 2004-12-12 |
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