Von Neumann’s War

“Yellow lines, got it.”

As the two men made it to the end of the high-bay a large sheet of aluminum that had a honeycomb structure milled out into it on its up side was slid up under a big roller by an unseen conveyor. The larger roller drum then pressed onto the sheet metal. The aluminum bucked, then rolled itself up into a cylinder about five meters in diameter around the huge drum roller. The former sheet that was now an aluminum tube was lifted upright by its end.

“Watch this part; it’s cool as hell.” John pointed at the large welding apparatus as it dropped to the seam of the sheet-metal cylinder.

Roger watched as a large welding rod that looked more like a pointed trailer hitch ball was pressed against the aluminum rocket tube while the ball was spinning at God only knew how many thousands of revolutions per minute. The welding rod was touched to the aluminum where it had been rolled together and it spun so fast that when it touched the metal the friction of it was hot enough to force the welding of the aluminum seam. The welding rod zipped down what it was turning into a rocket tube with a screech, sealing the seam with a near perfect joint.

“That is some cool shit.” Roger grinned like a kid in a candy store. He allowed himself the break of standing and staring in awe for just a few moments more before it was back to the urgent business of the Neighborhood Watch.

“Now, why don’t we get to looking at this second stage model, ’cause I’ve got to get back to work on the focal plane array packages for the telescope.” Roger put his hands in his pants pockets and the little kid’s giddy stare turned to a more serious one.

“Right. It’s around the corridor here.” John led Roger to another room with a shake table in it. Atop the table was a one-tenth scaled model of the second stage system.

There were three scaled engines on the table. The engines were the “stretched” or “extended” RL10B-2 motors from Pratt Whitney. In order to have twice the specific impulse and burn time, the tankage for both fuel and oxidizer had to be larger. The problem was that the rocket design team had not been able to find available tankage parts that had been flight-proven and were the appropriate size.

Roger surveyed the parts and the various engineering drawings lying on the floor and pinned to the walls around the room. There was one Solid Edge drawing of the engines on a computer monitor. Somebody must have just been in the room and stepped out for a moment or their screen saver was turned off. How damned hard could this be, he thought. We just need bigger tanks! I’ve got so much shit to be doing!

“You see, Rog, if we use the tanks from any other engine, the pumps won’t fit, the frame will be too large to fit in the aerodynamic shroud without building a new shroud, or the structural design will be questionable, which means we aren’t certain about the shake and bake of the larger frame. And if we go to a modified shroud we have to run all new CFD models of the ascent friction and you know that Dr. Powell won’t be happy with that.”

“Uh huh.” Roger frowned.

“There just aren’t enough available COTS or GOTS engine parts to solve this problem.” John pointed to the model, pointing out the deficiencies in the design. “Open for suggestions here.”

“Jesus, John, has this country been wrapped up in paperwork and bureaucracy for so long that just doing things is beyond us? Stack a couple of gas tanks out of old pickups together! Whatever it takes!”

“Weeelll.” John stretched out the word. “I do have a solution, but it isn’t from a space-qualified piece of hardware and both the Air Force and NASA frown on such. But if—”

“John. Let’s hear your idea.”

“Okay. It really is simple, but you’ll have to get a waiver from NRO, or Boeing will never approve or build it. I’ve been round and round with them about it. In their mind, it’s just way too much risk. That’s really why I brought you.” He pointed to the computer monitor. “Here look at this. I’ve tried to convince them that this is what we need to do but… well, hell, it has been harder than it was getting them to agree to the mods for the strap-on boosters. Risk-averse assholes.”

John pulled up a PowerPoint slide file and opened it. He scrolled through the slides to the second stage portion.

“Here is the standard RL10B-2.” John grabbed the tankage portion with the copy tool, then pasted it into a new slide. He then duplicated the tank. “I want to take two tanks and cut one end off each and then just weld the damned things together. Oh, there would have to be some adjustments to the cryo pipes, a little bit of structural integrity support, and stuff like that, but it should work.” He finished creating the image on the PowerPoint slide.

“I knew it was simple. Why don’t we just do it,” Roger said rather than asking.