Jettisonable battery systems for powering electrical turbopumps for launch vehicle rocket engine systems
AssigneeRocket Lab USA, Inc.
InventorsPeter Joseph Beck, Naomi Altman, Jarrod William Burton, Shaun Keith O'Donnell
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A launch vehicle having one or more rocket engines, an electric turbopump, and a plurality of batter units. Subsets of the battery units are jettisonable from the launch vehicle using battery jettison mechanisms. The launch vehicle may also include a controller that may determine that a remaining battery capacity of a first proper subset of the battery units is no longer needed for the remaining duration of a flight of the launch vehicle and may then, responsive to such a determination, cause the first proper subset of the battery units to be jettisoned.
Claims15
An apparatus comprising:
- a launch vehicle;
- and
- a rocket engine system that is part of the launch vehicle, the rocket engine system comprising:
- one or more rocket engines;
- a navigation system with a guidance system configured to indicate the rocket engine system's state vectors and provide the rocket engine system's target state vectors;
- an electric turbopump including an impeller and an electric motor configured to rotate the impeller and configured to supply propellant to at least one of the rocket engines;
- a set of battery units grouped into a plurality of different proper subsets of the battery units, each proper subset of the battery units configured to provide power to the electric motor of the electric turbopump when electrically connected with the electric motor of the electric turbopump;
- a plurality of sets of one or more battery jettison mechanisms, each set of the one or more battery jettison mechanisms configured to independently jettison a different one of the proper subsets of the battery units from the rocket engine system responsive to receipt of one or more control signals;
- and
- a controller, the controller communicatively connected with each of the battery jettison mechanisms and configured to:
- monitor, for each proper subset of the battery units, remaining battery capacity by monitoring a voltage of that proper subset of the battery units;
- determine, based on the remaining battery capacity of a first proper subset of the battery units, if the first proper subset of the battery units is no longer needed in order to provide sufficient electrical energy to power the electric motor of the turbopump for a remaining duration of a flight of the launch vehicle;
- control the set of one or more battery jettison mechanisms that is configured to jettison the first proper subset of the battery units to jettison the first proper subset of the battery units responsive, at least in part, to a determination that the remaining battery capacity of the first proper subset of the battery units is no longer needed in order to provide sufficient electrical energy to power the electric motor of the turbopump for the remaining duration of the flight of the launch vehicle;
- and
- determine whether the remaining capacity of the first proper subset of the battery units is no longer needed in order to provide sufficient electrical energy to power the electric motor of the turbopump for the remaining duration of the flight of the launch vehicle by calculating the power needed to move the rocket engine system's state vectors to the target state vectors.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.