Modern Engineering for Design of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines (Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics) Revised, Subsequent Edition

This book is a fantastic introduction to the design of liquid rocket engines in that it covers every component, from the thrust chamber itself to turbopumps, valves, propellant tanks and control systems. It goes over the relevant theory for each subsystem, and provides guidelines for their design based on NASA's experience.Solved design examples are provided in each section. There are also many engineering drawings from various existing engines that "show how it's done", although I wish they were of better quality.Another gripe is the use of Imperial units, but there's no avoiding that in US aerospace literature.I would strongly recommend the NASA SP-8xxx "Space Vehicle Design Criteria" monographs on chemical propulsion, available for free in PDF format, to go with this book. Although they're not as up-to-date, they go more in-depth and the illustrations are impeccable.

Very professional, used for continuing education and review.

Excellent updated version of NASA's well known SP-125.It's true that other books such as Space Propulsion Analysis and Design and especially Rocket Propulsion Elements can also provide sufficient overviews of the theory behind rocket propulsion, including liquid rocket propulsion. However, what this provides in addition is an exposition of the practical knowledge and everyday details required in turning theoretical rockets from general specifications on paper to practical working implementations. These practical descriptions and tips are supplemented by the many pictures scattered throughout the book which serve to exemplify far more effectively than the illustrations in other rocket propulsion books I have read.My only complaint about the book is of course that it is in Imperial, rather than SI units. But having to make conversions of equations and constants from this book is a small price to pay for the wealth of in-depth knowledge contained within.

I got this for one of my kids, who was young, and wanted to know why it was difficult to make rockets.For this purpose, the book is great. It shows you several aspects of the design problems. You can see this from the table of contents - it tries very hard to cover as much ground as is sensible.The diffculty for European readers is that the units are all imperial, that is, Gallons, Pounds, feet, inches, and so forth. This makes the numerical details - a sense of scale for what is being discussed - quite inaccesible for most of us over here. It's worth noting that also lead to the downfall of at least one recent space mision to Mars.Remarks like "its not rocket science" can certainly be shown as having a truthful sort of origin by looking at this. To "do" anything with this book, you would absolutely have to develop further and deeply in the following disciplines;1. Chemistry2. Metallurgy3. Thermodynamics4. Mechanics5. Experience with CAD, esp. simulation with solid and liquid state systems.6. Maths7. Electronics,8. Reliability...9. ???I wonder if any single mind could get round all of these, possibly, but you would be pretty lucky to get the chance nowadays. Education isn't cheap.I don't think, though that there is any harm in wanting to get as close to this as you like. The book is truly wonderful, almost a work of art, and even if jobs in this area are scarce, this has got to be worthwhile. Read this, do the background study, get a degree or two, and you may eventually get into industrial plant design, maybe even medical electronics, aerospace, or something. Why not? The world would be a better place if more people would dream a bit and aspire to do the hard stuff. I am full of admiration for people who did better than I did and are working in these kinds of fields.I'm going to get a few more books in this series, though I have to say, I'm a bit nervous about ordering books with titles including the words "missile propulsion". We live in troubled times.

This will provide a really high level overview of the subjects, and provide a reasonable amount of required math for proof of concepts. I will say it takes a personal extra step to further and master the complexities of individual components.The only con I have is with some of the images. I'm not sure if they can be updated with higher resolution and clearer images. In my opinion they sometimes are just black outlines of a turbo pump, haha. The next edition really needs to update these diagrams and charts.

If you work in the Rocket industry this is a must have in your office desk or home library. Perfect for senior engineering students who are interested in learning and understanding liquid rocket propellant and the challenges that are involved.