Regeneratively-Cooled, Turbopump-Fed, LOX/Methane Lunar Ascent Engines, Phase I

To-date, the realization of small-scale, high-performance liquid bipropellant rocket engines for lunar and other planetary ascent vehicles has largely been limited by the inability to operate at high chamber pressures in a regeneratively-cooled environment using on-board pumps for pressurization of the propellants. Ventions seeks to fulfill this critical need by using a novel fabrication scheme to realize small-scale thrusters and turbopumps, and proposes to extend its previously-demonstrated technologies (under DARPA and NASA sponsored efforts) to develop a micro-scale turbopump for cryogenic propellants in a lunar ascent vehicle. More »