Waxwing (rocket motor)

Waxwing was a British solid rocket motor used for apogee kick as the 3rd (upper) stage of the Black Arrow satellite launch vehicles. Waxwing was used to successfully place the Prospero X-3 satellite into low Earth orbit on 28 October 1971, Britain's only satellite launch on an indigenously-developed launch vehicle.

This article is about the rocket motor. For other uses, see Waxwing (disambiguation).
Black Arrow satellite deployment, with Waxwing upper stage.
Waxwing seen without its engine nozzle

Another use of Waxwing was to increase the velocity of test re-entry vehicles on Black Knight during tests for the Blue Streak missile.[1]

Design and development

Design was by the Rocket Propulsion Establishment (RPE) at Westcott and it was manufactured by Bristol Aerojet.[2] The casing was spherical and the propellant grain used an internal star profile to control the initial burn rate.

Specifications
  • Thrust: 29.4 kN[3][4]
  • Specific impulse: 2700 m/s (278 s) [3]
  • Burn time: 28 s
    40 seconds [4]
  • Weight:[3]
    • Gross mass: 397 kg (875 lb)
    • Unfuelled mass: 87 kg (192 lb)
  • Dimensions:[5]
    • Diameter: 28 in (0.71 m)
    • Overall length: 52 in (1.3 m)
    • Nozzle length: 22 in (0.56 m)
    • Nozzle diameter: 18 in (0.46 m)
gollark: Anyway, I don't have the compute available to do this sort of thing *regularly*.
gollark: That's probably too slow.
gollark: (newlines are because I am copypasting it out of a terminal)
gollark: Further output:> that would be a bit cheaty, but I suppose it could be done.<|endoftext|>I don't know exactly what it was going to involve, but I'm pretty sure it'd be a bit cheaty anyway.<|endoftext|>And there's probably a guide to do that, but I don't know exactly what I'm doing about that is doing it.<|endoftext|>I can't actually read the summary, though.<|endoftext|>No, it's on the roadmap though.<|endoftext|>The next update:> your code is binding and has some bits which aren't signed into my account.<|endoftext|>Not really. It's not going to be hard to make a userscript for it.<|endoftext|>You could also do that.<|endoftext|>It's not a forum thing here.<|endoftext|>The guide's up to the ones below the GDPR, which is neat.<|endoftext|>I'm working on a link-type guide to the actual forum, or something.<|endoftext|>They can't really do much testing, though, though, so you could
gollark: I know, right?

References
  1. "Waxwing rocket motor".
  2. "Point of the Arrow" FLIGHT International, 11 November 1971
  3. "Black Arrow-3". astronautix.com.
  4. Black Arrow exhibit, Science Museum, London
  5. "Waxwing dimensional drawing". Space UK.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.