Trw Limited

James S Bassichis

Dale L Hook

Robert L Sackheim

A rocket propulsion system for spacecraft achieves greater economy, reliability and efficiency rocket by incorporating monopropellant RCS thrusters (1a-1f) for attitude control and bipropellant SCAT thrusters (5a-5c) for velocity control. Both sets of thrusters are designed to use the same liquid fuel, supplied by a pressurized non-pressure regulated tank, and operate in the blow down mode. In the propulsion system such station keeping and attitude control thrusters may function in conjunction with a large thrust apogee kick engine, which may also be of the SCAT thruster construction, that uses the same propellent fuel. Hydrazine and Binitrogen tetroxide are preferred as the fuel and oxidizer, respectively. The new system offers a simple conversion of existing monopropellant systems to a high performance bipropellant dual mode system without the extreme complexity and cost attendant to a binitrogen tetroxide--hydrazine bipropellant system.

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Playa del Rey, CA, United States of America

James S Bassichis