A4 / V2 Rocket in detail: Turbopump

U.S. should be thankfulll for this german technology, which allowed NASA to build its rockets!

I have an OCD about detail. So, this video was Nirvana. Finally, I knew the V2 propulsion system details. I’ve no words to express my gratitude for this unsurpassable presentation.

Does anyone know where I can find a more detailed explaination of how the V2 rocket turbo-pump works? I found this was kind of just brushing the surface.

The stylized version makes it much more understandable thank you.

Lovely video

Excellent! I've heard people mention rocket turbopumps many times, but never understood how they work. You are a fantastic teacher.

Need an update on basic turbine manufacture. If the steam turbine is a perfect circle how are the blades fed into a slot with no opening for access? Was the outer rim with the anchor slot bolted in segments to the inner wheel?

Rotating fuel line? Brits don't use the term recirculation or the shorter recirc?

"The turbopump is the critical technology" 🤔 The Soviets learned how to build successful turbopumps. Their moon program came to a crashing (or is that exploding) halt because they could not fabricate world class distribution plates. Wouldn't a more accurate statement be "the turbopump is the first critical technology that must be mastered" because there are several others that also must be mastered as failure with any of them will prevent successful flight?

This is exactly what I’ve been trying to find for so long. Can’t tell you how thankful I am for the specific and detailed info

Simply amazing. Thanks for the journey you’ve taken us on. I am rewatching this video so I can rewatch Pt.2.

Actually, the turbopump is needed not for the injectors primarily, but for the chamber pressure.
Unless you prefer to pressurize the tank itself, in which case it's a better (because the combustion) balloon on the loose, you're dealing with something more like a jet engine from a plane. Except that you don't use the turbopump to throw unburnt air out the back, but bypass the turbine with the main combustion chamber so you can run the main combustion chamber with a much hotter flame (more efficient) and directly feed into the jet nozzle, only using a less-hot (but still fairly hot) source of pressurized fluid to drive the turbine that is the core of a turbojet.

There are in fact non-turbine jet engines, notably the ramjet an the pulsejet, the former just runs at close enough to the speed of sound into the oncoming air that it can't (easily enough) escape to the side, instead getting sqeezed into the combustion chamber, where it's burnt and the heat from this allows to expand more/harder than the intake compressed, leaving some net thrust.
The latter, the pulsejet, works at lower speeds (a french design from the around 1950, SNECMA's Escopette 3340, for example, had a dry mass (incl. mounting hardware) of 5kg, 10kgf thrust (11kgf static), 1.8 kg/kgf/h thurst-specific fuel consumption (turbojets at the time had about 1.3, so this simple design was barely worse), 150 mm main tube diameter and 2800 mm overall length), by igniting fuel/air mix in the chamber, expanding it down a long tube, and using the momentum of the exhaust to drag fresh air in via a valve or suitably-shaped secondary outlet.

What do you know about the gyroscopes and guidance system on the V2?
Transistors where made like 20 years later. How did they target London.

Is the turbine a Tesla turbine or is there a similar design turbine?

Well done, this is brillaint.

As a drag racer, mechanic and hod rodder my whole life I can't look at the turbo pump and not imagine it's a massive intake turbocharger or turbine supercharger if you will. It's beautiful!

take a shot of JD everytime he says 'pump' , hint you'll need a 1L bottle.

I'm amazed by the similarities between the V2's engine and the Soviet RD-108 and RD-107 of the R7 rocket. The V2 and the R7 used hydrogen peroxide to drive the turbine. The ignition sequence was very similar. Both started with the preliminary stage, where the propellants flowed to the combustion chamber by gravity and are ignited with pyrotechnics. The V2, however, went from preliminary stage straight to the main stage, with the turbine spinning to full power within a second. On the RD-107 and 108, the preliminary stage led to the intermediate stage, where the turbine operated at a reduced speed and the engines produced an intermediate thrust, very similar to the V2 operating under the 8-ton valve. Then, the main stage started with the turbine spinning to full speed, the engines produced full thrust and the rocket lifted off. If you look at a R7-Soyuz launch, is basically a larger version of the V2 that burns kerosene instead of alcohol.

I know this is older but dear God I love this stuff and he is a world treasure. I would never even known the questions to ask and he just answered them before I even had them. Thanks for the work guys

Absolutely fantastic ❤❤❤
Every bit as professional as the old BBC documentaries.

Absolutely brilliant - thank you.

Incredibly well done video. Excellent explanations and models.

Back here before moving on to Part 2.

I can't find part 2 that covers the gyroscopic effects of the turbo pump steam turbine. In addition I am interested in the theory of operation of the overspeed cutout switch. This is a great series with information that I had never considered. Thank you

Interested information for sure. I worked at a power plant for 35 years including steam turbine, pumps ect ..
Thanks for all of the work putting this video together.

Thank you for the lesson, absoluteley fantastic !!!

Been waiting for part 2 for soooo long

part 2?

Ok 🤔 so the steam generator is a clever and rather simple system to initiate the entire overarching rocket machine. But once the main fuel has ignited in the main engine, it seems intuitive to think the energy produced from that main engine should take over the job of spinning the turbopumps. And in modern cryo/liquid fueled rockets we see exactly this... well sort of. Even going so far as to remove the steam system entirely in favor of a separate combustion chamber that uses primary fuel and primary oxidizer to drive the turbo from the start. The Germans' choice to use the steam system not only as a pilot exciter, but as the ONLY exciter for the entirety of the flight strikes me as indicative of the limitations of the components at the time. Or did they deliberately decide on this for other reasons? Cost? Simplicity? Raw materials availability? I'm guessing limitations because one would need quite a magical sort of metal turbine to withstand primary fuel/lox expanding-gas temps as opposed to just a bit of superheated steam. Even the modern rockets today use an inefficient fuel/lox mixture to drive the turbine with a handicapped expanding-gas temperature at the cost of wasted energy and wasted fuel in order to prevent melting the turbine blades. Still, neither system is fully utilizing the available power to spin the turbine. To me, this means rockets are purposefully limited at this moment in our evolution. 🤔 Now, if a rocket were to actually use a main thrust engine to spin the turbopumps, just what sort of power could be made as a result? Or we could re-think the system a bit.. 🤔 use a main engine to turn a turbine which turns the pumps AND an alternator which produces a tremendous amount of electricity that we can use to do all kinds of things, including creating electromagnets for some sort of propulsion. The main engines would be useful for primary propulsion (rocket thrust) and electricity generation. All other tasks on the ship, including secondary propulsion, could come from electrical systems

What was the conversation efficiency of the V2 turbine?

That sir, was a most brilliant demonstration.🤗

Von Braun got the pump manufacturers together and gave them the weight, size and flow requirements for the pump, he was worried. The pump people said that he pretty much described a fire pump. Looking at the video the pumps look very similar to the boiler feed pumps we sold when I was an engineer at Worthington Pump. The feature of the pump inlets facing one another helps to balance the thrust forces the pump generates.

If only I could get some data on the inlet and outlet steam states of this thing during typical operation. I'd like to know how efficient the steam turbine was

Absolutely incredible piece of work, the best of the best. Thank you for all your time and energy contributed into these series.

maxi Boss about the resolve of the differential equation that's a matter ofPI/2 which empeach to put the sin or the cos of the complexe substituut in evidence understood maxi boss signed down mini boss

U r the best coach ever seen🙏🙏🙏

Thats an astonishing presentation! Im so happy I found this video 😀

wie kompliziert...

Just fantastic! Thanks!!

hello 3D is calling

It's hard to comprehend that all this fine engineering work went into creating a single-use rocket that would be destroyed on reaching its destination.

AND 30 YEARS BEFORE THIS AND MILLENNIA MORE....WE WERE RIDING HORSES AROUND ...AND ONLY LOOKED AT A BIRD AND MADE WISHES ON FLIGHT...👽

I just wanted to come back and watch this again. This was my first introduction into turbopumps and I'm very grateful.

This video is just insane.

Need more context and data, let’s look at diagram...🤓