|
XCOR Aerospace announced today that it
has demonstrated its first bread-board prototype for a reciprocating
piston pump. Key components to many rocket engines are pumps for
fuel and oxidizer. This prototype development took less than four
weeks from initial design to demonstrations of pumping pressures and
flow rate appropriate to XCOR's current XR-4A3 engines installed on the
EZ-Rocket.
"This is one step on the road to pump-fed rocket engines for affordable space
transportation," said XCOR Chief Engineer and co-founder Dan DeLong.
"Thus far during testing, we have been pleased with the pump's
performance. The reciprocating pump design for this prototype has many
advantages over current rocket engine pumps. For instance, it can
be stopped and started very quickly. Currently turbo pumps are
used on many larger rocket engines but they don't scale down to smaller
engines and can be extremely costly." XCOR expects to
continue development on this design and plans to test future pump
designs on its rocket engines and vehicles. The company also plans to
sell its pump designs to other commercial and government clients.
XCOR Aerospace is a California
corporation located in Mojave, California. The company is in the
business of developing and producing safe, reliable and re-usable rocket
engines and rocket powered vehicles. Photos and video of the pump
and XCOR rocket engines are available at: http://www.xcor.com.
Contact: Wayne Hammack
The Hammack Group
Phone: 303.469.7479
Fax: 303.469.7494
|
