Introduction, Day 1

I am Chris. I live in Minnesota, have a B.S. degree in Physics, and am trying to introduce myself to the field of rocketry and aerospace. To do this, I am planning to first build the simplest (safest?) bipropellant rocket engine I can muster. It is really more of a rocket igniter, but the only real design goal is to achieve ignition and supersonic flow (i.e. see mach diamonds). I figured the easiest way to get started is to set the bar low enough that I can confidently expect to finish it soon and within my available budget but still gain experience with most of the systems needed for a more complicated rocket engine. I don't want to deal with liquid oxidizers right off the bat, for instance.

It will be small with thrust in the range of single digits pounds of thrust, chamber pressure of somewhere between 25 and 100 psi, will fit in a cube about 2 or 3 inches on a side, and will use gaseous propane for fuel and compressed air for oxidizer. It will not be cooled, but I expect it will probably run cooler than other engines which use a more concentrated oxidizer.

I plan to make it out of stainless steel hopefully only with a drill press as far as power tools go (I have access to better tools, but I do not yet have experience with them). It will be ignited by a sparkplug which is as large in diameter as the combustion chamber (about 18 mm). I will try to update this blog each day to try to keep making progress until I am finished. Today, I bought the spark plug, got a tap for the spark plug on order (with no commitment to buying it) and called the metal stock company to ask about stock. Tomorrow, I hope to get sparks from it.