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A year in orbit: ISS deployment tests radiation detectors for future space missions
The predawn darkness on a cool Florida night was shattered by the ignition of nine Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The thrust of the engines shook the ground miles away. From a distance, the rocket appeared to slowly rise above the horizon. For the cargo onboard, the launch was anything but gentle, as the ignition of liquid oxygen generated more than 1.5 million pounds of force. After the rocket had been out of sight for several minutes, the booster dramatically returned to Earth with several sonic booms in a captivating show of engineering designed to make space travel less expensive and more sustainable.
Harold P. Smith, Jr.
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 14 | Number 4 | December 1962 | Pages 371-379
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE62-A26244
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A previous work on open loop dynamics of nuclear rocket engines (1) is expanded to include integral temperature error feedback control of reactivity and proportional pressure error feedback control of propellant flow with first order lags placed between the desired controller positions and the actual positions. The resulting series of ordinary, nonlinear, differential equations are approximated by a linear model in order to analyze the low-frequency dynamics. It is shown that the low and high frequencies may be decoupled and that the proposed method of control is stable for small variations away from any point of steady-state operation. Algebraic equations, in terms of design parameters, are derived for control settings which yield optimum response characteristics. It is further shown that the asymptotic response is improved by reduction of the mechanical inertia of the turbopump but is independent of the thermal inertia of the core. The analysis is corroborated by analog simulation of the nonlinear model for the case of low-power-high-power transition, using only feedback control for flow and reactivity variation.