We’ve been keeping you all abreast of some wild stuff that has been popping up on eBay lately. It appears a dude in France (we assume a dude, because women seem to have the good sense to largely stay away from stuff like this!) had an amazing collection of cold war era rocket engines from Russia and other places and he is liquidating them one by one. We actually missed a monster he had for sale last week that was more than 3x the strength of the rocket engine you will see below.
What we’re looking at here is a Soviet engineered and built liquid propellant rocket engine that was used in high powered surface to air missiles apparently called the “Guideline” class. According to the eBay ad, this type of engine provided the power for the Guideline that famously felled American U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers in the 1960. Going right down to brass tacks, this 103lb engine can produce the equivalent of 50,000hp. OOGA BOOGA!
According to the seller, if one were to remove the turbo pump apparatus and replace it with high pressure tanks than this engine would way about 50lbs and could fit into a miniscule streamliner for LSR action. We really want to see that happen. Hey, for $12,000 it is hell of a lot cheaper than building a full tile race motor (of course you have to figure out what exotic chemicals you are going to power it with, how you plan on mounting it, and there may be a few questions to answer at customs, too).
Finally, the guy put this fantastic disclaimer in his ad –
Warning: do not use rocket engines if you are not used to them. Do not play with rocketry if you don’t know anything about rockets, it’s very dangerous. Buyer is responsible of trying to use the item, and therefore responsible of any damage the item could cause. Using the item requires specific technical knowledge, know-how, and lot of safety cautions. Buyer is responsible of his own doings. Please keep all that in mind before bidding. Thanks.
EBAY AD: RUSSIAN LIQUID PROPELLANT ROCKET
…hmmm, wonder if that would fit in the 4wheeler I’m rebuilding this Winter?……
Put this in ANYTHING.
I had to laugh where the disclaimer says to not use rocket engines if you’re not used to them. How do you get “used to” a 50,000 hp rocket engine???
Used to working on them I’d assume.
Without the turbopump it’d just be a “Standard” blow down pressure driven liquid rocket which on a LSR car would work just fine as weight isn’t the killer issue it is on something that flys. Without the turbopump it’s just an injector assembly inside of the combustion chamber and a nozzle. That being said, there is a lot of work in injector design and nozzle expansion ratios. Not to mention cooling them so you don’t melt the parts.
Looking it up, this is a RFNA/RP1 (Red Fuming Nitric Acid/Kerosene) system that pretty much the simplest oxidizer/fuel system out there. Don’t know what the availability of RFNA is in the US but shouldn’t be too hard to get it working on a blow down propellant feed arrangement.