Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Corporal Rocket Engine WOW !!!!!!!


Here's the latest addition to the collection, it's a very cool Corporal rocket engine, thanks to LtCDR Scott Schneewis, http://www.spaceaholic.com/, for ID'ing the engine. The Corporal rocket was designed as a surface to surface tactical nuclear weapon delivery system. JPL was the prime contractor that developed this rocket with Firestone. It was deployed to Germany as a front line nuclear defense weapon, to defend against a Russian attack, against western europe.


As a side note, this engine is a direct decendant of the WW2 German V-2. This is a liquid fueled engine, that burns fuming red nitric acid and hydrazine, which we all know is REALLY bad stuff. The big problem was that the Corporal had a 46% success rate, it took a long time to prepare for launch and with the fuel toxicity issue, made it difficult to use in real world scenarios.


I purchased this rocket engine from the grandson of a gentleman who worked at JPL on the design of this rocket. This engine is dated 1960, it was the last upgraded motor before the project was cancelled in 1963 and I can't begin to tell you how cool this is. I want to strap it to my bike and ride around the neighborhood with CO2 shooting out of the back.


The engine is 5ft tall, the engine bell is 28" in diameter, it weighs approx 150lbs and it's the coolest piece of hardware I've found in a long time. Unfortunately my wife's reaction, wasn't the same as my sons or mine. She could be heard throughout the house, when seeing it for the first time, "what the hell is this and how long is it going to be in my kitchen" ?!?!?!?!?!? I guess it doesn't go with the decor and our styles of decorating differ slightly. She likes modern chic and I like early space program.


One of my friends suggested that I put a lamp shade on it, so she wouldn't notice what it was. After I stopped laughing, I started looking for a place to get it out of the house. Another good friend wrote, "you are sooooooo getting a divorce" !!!!!


The specs of this rocket are:


JPL/Firestone SSM-A-17/M2/MGM-5 Corporal

Data for M2/M2A1 (MGM-5A/B)


Length: 13.8 m (45 ft 4 in)
Finspan: 2.1 m (7 ft)
Diameter: .76 m (30 in)
Weight: 5000 kg (11000 lb)
Speed: 3500 kmh (2200 mph)
Ceiling: 40 km (25 miles)
Range Min: 48 km (30 miles); Max: 130 km (80 miles)
Propulsion: JPL liquid-fueled rocket motor 20000 lbs up to 64 sec
Warhead: W-7 nuclear fission (20 kT)

2 comments:

LJeske said...

This is in your house???? You really are out of control. When you said you had some space stuff, I did not realize you had SOME SPACE STUFF!!!!!

Unknown said...

From all that I have read about the Corporal missile program, it had very little to do with the German A-4 (V-2), especially the engine. The Corporal program was begun in early 1944 when not much was known about the German rocket and it continued as a JPL program at Caltech, a long way from Ft Bliss where the German rocket men were. The initial design had much more to do with the experiments of Robert Goddard as observed by some of the Caltech team in that the regenerative cooling was effected by use of tubing wound around the engine combustion chamber in a tight spiral running between the exhaust nozzle and the head of the chamber. This was how Goddard did it while the A-4 had a simply twin steel shells with the fuel flowing haphazardly between the two but also injecting fuel into the chamber below the head to aid cooling. Goddard patented this film cooling method but the JPL did not use this method since ultimately, fuel flowing through conductive tubes cooled the engines better. This particular engine differed from the earlier Corporal engines in that it used tubes that ran parallel from head to nozzle. This was an even better solution and has been used on all US liquid-cooled engines since.

Next, the head of the combustion chamber was of the "shower-head' variety as opposed to the 18 pre-burners used on the A-4. This allowed for a much more compact and lighter engine and this method of propellant injection has been used on most high-thrust US engines since.

And finally, the Corporal did not use concentrated hydrogen peroxide to fuel turbines to pump them into the combustion chamber as the A-4 did. Surprisingly, the Soviet Union did use the A-4 turbine system in the basic rocket used in all of their manned space launches, the R-7 which was their first ICBM. This rocket with only minor design changes continues to this day to launch the Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS. The Corporal uses a system of high pressure tanks to force propellants out and into the engine completely without pumps. Goddard had to abandon this system eventually in favor of pumps but JPL made it work for the Corporal.

Lastly, it would be more correct to consider the Corporal as American competition to the German A-4. Not so much as a weapon, but as a precursor to later missiles, the Corporal was very successful where as the A-4 became largely a dead end. With the addition of a shower-head injection system, it continued only in the Redstone missile, and the manufacturing company, Rocketdyne, a division of North American, abandoned it completely, starting over with a design more closely resembling your Corporal engine. As such, yours is truly a find!!