Guest:  Dr. John Bossard; Topics:  John's Turborocket design, pump fed architecture, technology design, uses and application, rotary rocket engine history and more. 

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We welcomed Dr. John Bossard back to the program to discuss his continued work on his rotary Turborocket Engine System.  John was first a Space Show guest on Tuesday, June 17, 2003.  Since then, our guest has continued working on his design.  John reached out to me to provide listeners with this update.  I believe most of our 97 minute discussion ranged from mildly technical to very technical.  To better understand what our guest was doing and why, I suggested you check out his website which is https://turborocken.com.  In addition, our guest has a YouTube channel with video of his tests and work.  On YouTube, please put "turborocken" in the search engine. 

We started the program by asking our guest just why he was interested in a rotary rocket engine plus we wanted to know his goals and objectives in working to advance what he calls the Turborocket Engine System.  Our guest explained all this in detail during the first part of our program so pay attention.  Let us know what you think of his plans, the open source component, possible future uses for a Turborocket future launcher.  By far, most of our discussion dealt with technical aspects of rotary rocket motors, fuels, why making the Turborocket pump fed and more. Our guest brough up Gary Hudson and his work on the rotary rocket along with some of the work by XCOR, both of which he used as effective examples in explaining some of the challenges and likely solutions to the problems being encountered by others going before him with this type of motor.  One more thing, our guest wrote a book on all of this which I suggest you latch on to if you are interested in this type of rocket engine. The book is titled "Design and Analysis of Turborocket Engine Systems" and is available and is available at most of the usual book places. 

Our guest received multiple emails plus callers with technical questions in addition to their adding personal touches to the examples cited by our guest since they were close to or associated with the projects mentioned by Dr. Bossard.  Most of the questions were technical dealing with the pump, tip motors, why the use of helicopter blades in the first place.  Then as we were moving toward the latter part of our discussion and the end of the program, up came the subject of overcoming the image of the rotary rocket and why the need for a Turborocket launcher in the first place.  Our guest addressed these questions straight on so the best I can do is remind you to listen carefully to this discussion.  Let us know your thoughts on the Turborocket and its place among launchers going forward with our development of space.

I wanted to mention John's goals and objectives in his working on this project for so many years. I asked him what outcome he wanted or expected. My understanding was that John wanted to advance the design of the rocket motor, which he believes has very real advantages over most of today's traditional rockets, so that others can get an idea of those advantages and pick up the design and build one for their business or specific purpose.  That was a big part of why all of this work is moving forward as open source.  Please listen carefully to how he described his goals and expectations.  Let us know if you think the design will advance enough to entice entrepreneurs and others to further develop a Turborocket for their company and their business plans.  John believes that he can advance the design and technology enough to be a real drive for this option for new players in the launch field in the near term and going forward with space development.  Before we ended, John did share with us where he wanted to be in five years and then as we were ending, he came back and answered my question on the ten year timeline.  He even said that the best use ten years and out will be with space planes.  Please comment on all of this on our blog.

Please post your comments/questions for Dr. Bossard on our blog for this program.  You can reach John through me or his website and YouTube channel.