Reply to post: Re: Ran out of hydraulic fluid?

SpaceX drone hovership ROCKET LANDER BURN: Musk to try again

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: Ran out of hydraulic fluid?

Ah, no its not quite that simple. You see there are not that many ways to power the hydraulic system on a rocket, most rockets don't have a pump to run the hydraulic system, they just have a fluid tank and a gas tank that pressurizes it. With a system like that you can't really have a closed loop, its not a matter of just add tubing. Russians have a system where fuel straight from turbopump is used as hydraulic fluid, that way they cant run out as far as there is any fuel left, and if there is no fuel left it doesn't matter anyway if you have hydraulics or not. But the problem there is that you only have hydraulic pressure when the rocket motor is actually firing, kind of a problem for rocket like Falcon where main engine is shut off and reignited later.

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