Fastrac engine
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Fastrac engine hot-fire test at Marshall Space Flight
Center (NASA/MSFC)
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A low-cost rocket engine, with a thrust of 270,000 newtons, propelled by
liquid oxygen and RP-1,
that was being developed at the Marshall Space
Flight Center as the propulsion unit for the X-34 reusable rocket plane.
With the cancellation of the X-34 project in 2001, work on the Fastrac engine
also came to a halt. At the time, Fastrac was only the second of about 30
new rocket engines built over the past quarter of a century, to originate
in the United States. Fastrac was less expensive than similar engines because
of an innovative design approach that used commercial, off-the-shelf parts
and fewer of them. Some of its characteristics, including its range of thrust
and specific impulse, are shared with the Merlin 1 engine used on SpaceX's
Falcon 1.
Related categories
• ROCKET
ENGINE TYPES
• ROCKETRY
TERMINOLOGY
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