FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

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Early Experiments with Ramjet Engines in Flight
Yu. A. POBEDONOSTSEV, Soviet Union
. . . currently the application of ramjets for space vehicles can be seen in their
use for accelerating a rocket xvithin the limits of a continuous atmosphere up to
a velocity of mach 7-10. Academician B. S. Stechkin
Development of space rockets represents an extremely
complex scientific problem. But among the
many problems, solution of which determines progress
in rocketry, that of the energy content of the
propellant heads the list. It can be said with good
reason that the launching of sputniks, rocket flight
to the Moon, Venus and Mars, manned orbital
flights, and soft landing on the Moon—all these
remarkable achievements are the gigantic strides
in the development of Soviet science and rocketpower
engineering. It is quite evident that the development
and modification of jet engines and the
selection of the most efficient propellants for them
is still going to be one of the fundamental determinative
tasks of cosmonautics for many decades to
come, as it was at the very outset of the cosmic era.
Conducting research of energy content of propellants
on a wide scale, Soviet scientists from the very
beginning advanced and developed the concept of
using air-breathing engines in space engineering in
addition to other types of rocket engines.
At the beginning of this century K.E. Tsiolkovskiy
put forward the concept of using engines propelled
by air oxygen for the boost of spacecrafts during
their flight in the atmosphere. 1
FA. Tsander, as well as other scientists, has devoted
much of his effort to the investigation of this
problem. 2
The concept of using air-breathing engines to
boost space rockets is universally recognized at the
present time. Numerous theoretical and experi­
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mental studies published in the world press indicate
that the use of air-breathing engines in the first
stages of carrier rockets permits a severalfold increase
of the mass of sputniks to be orbited, while
maintaining unchanged the launching weight, or
even decreasing it appreciably, yet maintaining the
payload weight.
In 1907-13 Rene Lorin, a French engineer, suggested
the concept of a ramjet engine. 3 Its first theoretical
foundation, the design and experiments with
ramjet engines, however, were carried out much
later by Soviet scientists.
One of the closest disciples and followers of N.Ye.
Zhukovskiy, Boris Sergeyevitch Stechkin, now Academician,
delivering a course of lectures on hydrodynamics
at the Mechanics Department of the
Moscow N. E. Bauman Higher Technical School in
1928 expounded his new theory of ramjet engines.
Strictly following the classical principles of gas
dynamics, he derived for the most general case the
equation for thrust and efficiency of ramjet engines
in a resilient medium.
The problem of the reactive force of fluid flow,
passing through a jet engine (for an incompressible
fluid, when there is no thermal aspect) was
developed in detail earlier by N.Ye. Zhukovskiy and
expounded in his classic works On Reaction of
Fluid Inflow and Outflow and Contribution to the
Theory of Ships Propelled by the Reactive Force of
Water.
B.S. Stechkin investigated in a similar way the