What is it about?
For an in-space vehicle, the paper provides a method to determine the optimum balance between the mass of multilayer insulation added to reduce propellant boiloff, the mass of propellant boiloff predicted to occur, and the mass of additional propellant needed to compensate for that boiloff.
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Why is it important?
Many authors believe that cryocoolers will be needed to keep cryogenic propellants cold and minimize or even prevent boiloff. Yet cryocoolers are expensive, and greatly increase spacecraft complexity. The paper suggests that simply carrying additional propellant to compensate for losses is the best solution, and provides a method to calculate how much additional propellant is needed.
Perspectives
Rocket engines fueled by Liquid Hydrogen (LH2) / Liquid Oxygen (LO2) have the highest specific impulse of known liquid propellant rocket engines. This paper suggests that concerns about propellant boiloff in space should not eliminate these engines from consideration when planning missions to Mars.
Mr. Thomas M Perrin
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Compensating for Cryogenic Propellant Boiloff for a Cargo Mission to Mars, September 2017, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2017-5274.
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