FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 10 241
15 February 1940: Helical impeller pump run at 9000 rpm
with diesel fuel and aluminum powder and a discharge
flow of 2 kg/sec.
29 February 1940: First successful Roots-pump run with diesel
fuel and aluminum at 12,000 rpm (30% aluminum powder).
1 March 1940: First successful centrifugal pump run with lox.
22 March 1940: First successful test with combination of
rotating water-ring and centrifugal pump serving as lox
boost pump.
2 April 1940: First high-pressure lox pump run! (Combination
of water-ring and gear pump A pi= +0.5 atm, ip2 =
+ 10 atm abs (atii), A pa = +95 atm abs).
26 April 1940: Successful lox pumping tests with a customary
centrifugal pump; a water-ring pump takes in gaseous
oxygen from the first stage of the centrifugal pump
(Apollo-pump MK 30; 1450 rpm). . . . Lox pump tests
conducted so far show that lox can be fed by any standard
high-pressure system (centrifugal, gear), if temperature
influences and chemical properties are taken into account
for the setup; especially no grease and no steel are acceptable;
instead, copper alloys must be used and initially
developing gaseous oxygen (gox) be removed, e.g., by subcooling
through prepressurization (gravitational head, high
flow rates, Edur-pump, Sihi-pump or boost pump) or by
pumping gox (Apollo-pump).
FIGURE 4.—Experimental high-pressure 6-stage rotary pump
for liquid 03 pump. At 15,000 rpm it pumps 5 kg/sec of
liquid 0„ at 150 atm.
FIGURE 5.—Rocket motor test stand. This motor produced 1000 kg of thrust for a duration
of 5 min.