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eBay Find: A Soviet Liquid-Propellant Rocket Engine That Would Be Fun To Use Until We Killed Ourselves With It


eBay Find: A Soviet Liquid-Propellant Rocket Engine That Would Be Fun To Use Until We Killed Ourselves With It

If nothing else, the fact that this Soviet Cold War era liquid rocket engine, originally designed to power a cruise missile, showed up on eBay illustrates the fact that not even the craziest among us has any idea of the cool junk that lives in the garages, basements, and attics of America. Seriously, now in the bloody hell does anyone even come to own this thing? You didn’t stumble upon this rig at a swap meet or yard sale. You didn’t find it in the trunk of an old Buick you bought. Great Uncle Sal’s will didn’t say, “I hereby give my Soviet liquid propellant rocket engine to my nephew Bill because he was good at science in grade school.” On the plus side, the guy selling the thing is a hot rodder because he mentions what the rocket would be capable of when strapped to a car or more properly in a car.

Here’s some text from the ad:

This is a true liquid-popellant rocket engine with turbopump and regenerative cooling producing up to 7700 lbf of thrust and weighing only 105 lbs.

This rocket engine was designed by Soviet engineers during Cold War with the purpose of pushing the famous S-75 / SA-2 Guideline surface to air missile.

This is the latest version of the rocket engine for this missile : Isayev S2.720

Maximum thrust : 34.3 kN / 3500 kgf / 7700 lbf

(Thrust level was adjustable between 2,075 kgf and 3,500 kgf (4,580 lbf and 7,700 lbf))

In all honesty, that may as well be a Chinese/Sanskrit. Scroll down to see photos and the link to this ad!

eBay Link: A freaking Soviet liquid propellant rocket! 


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14 thoughts on “eBay Find: A Soviet Liquid-Propellant Rocket Engine That Would Be Fun To Use Until We Killed Ourselves With It

  1. CTX-SLPR

    Looks potentially complete enought to use. The hard part about using most liquid rockets (especially efficient ones) is that you need a way to pump all the fuel out of the tank. That turbo looking thing on the top of the unit is the turbo pump, burn fuel and oxidizer in a combuster and route the exhaust through the turbine to power the pump section, which you really need to make this thing work.

    Some translation for the text:
    This is a true liquid-popellant rocket engine with turbopump and regenerative cooling producing up to 7700 lbf of thrust and weighing only 105 lbs.
    See above for the turbopump. Regenerative cooling uses the fuel to cool the nozzle allowing higher combustion chamber temperatures, think reverse flow cooling i.e. LT1. Power to weight is huge on a rocket, though a bit more important is “inert mass fraction” which is the amount of weight that is not payload (warhead in this case) or fuel that gets burned up.

    This rocket engine was designed by Soviet engineers during Cold War with the purpose of pushing the famous S-75 / SA-2 Guideline surface to air missile.
    Vietnam era pilots will tell you about the flying telephone pole SAM, that’s an SA-2

    This is the latest version of the rocket engine for this missile : Isayev S2.720

    Maximum thrust : 34.3 kN / 3500 kgf / 7700 lbf
    Think WOT power. At optimum nozzle expansion (think engine VE) and full fuel and oxidizer flow that’s how much force the motor will produce.

    (Thrust level was adjustable between 2,075 kgf and 3,500 kgf (4,580 lbf and 7,700 lbf))
    It’s throttleable within a range, something you can’t do with at all with a solid rocket or easily with a hybrid (solid fuel liquid/gaseous oxidizer) or a gas pressure liquid (inert gas pushes the liquid out of the tank) motor.

    I WANT IT!!!!!

  2. NitroNut

    Hey I know, lets put in a Smart Car of a Toyota iQ, maybe it will help them get up to FWY speed a little faster.

  3. bkbridges

    Im sure my old boss is bidding on this…The hypergolic fuel and “oxidizer” are brutally toxic and very hard to come by so firing it up may be rather difficult…I like plain old Jet A and LOX to power my rocket motors…

  4. Lon

    I have a go kart in my shop. right now it has a 5 HP Briggs. That rocket engine would be a lot more fun.

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