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Rutherford is a liquid-propellant rocket engine designed by aerospace company Rocket Lab [8] and manufactured in Long Beach, California. [9] The engine is used on the company's own rocket, Electron. It uses LOX (liquid oxygen) and RP-1 (refined kerosene) as its propellants and is the first flight-ready engine to use the electric-pump-fed cycle.
Its Rutherford engines are the first electric-pump-fed engine to power an orbital-class rocket. [17] Electron is often flown with a kickstage or Rocket Lab's Photon spacecraft. Although the rocket was designed to be expendable, Rocket Lab has recovered the first stage twice and is working towards the capability of reusing the booster. [18]
Generally, axial pumps tend to give much lower pressures than centrifugal pumps, and a few bars is not uncommon. Their advantage is a much higher volumetric flowrate. For this reason they are common for pumping liquid hydrogen in rocket engines, because of its much lower density than other propellants which usually use centrifugal pump designs.
As of December 2020, the only rocket engines to use electric propellant pump systems are the Rutherford engine, [2] ten of which power the Electron rocket, [2] and the Delphin engine, five of which power the first stage of Astra Space's Rocket 3. [3] On 21 January 2018, Electron was the first electric pump-fed rocket to reach orbit. [4]
The process can make all the carbon fiber structures as well as handle cutting, drilling, and sanding such that the parts are ready for final assembly. [197] The company objective as of November 2019 was to reduce the overall Electron manufacturing cycle to seven days. [194] [196] [198] Rutherford engine production uses additive manufacturing ...
The RS-25 engine consists of pumps, valves, and other components working in concert to produce thrust. Fuel (liquid hydrogen) and oxidizer (liquid oxygen) from the Space Shuttle's external tank entered the orbiter at the umbilical disconnect valves and from there flowed through the orbiter's main propulsion system (MPS) feed lines; whereas in the Space Launch System (SLS), fuel and oxidizer ...
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The recovered parts were brought to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson for the process of conservation. [30] [29] In August 2014, it was revealed that parts of two different F-1 engines were recovered, one from Apollo 11 and one from another Apollo flight, while a photograph of a cleaned-up engine was released.