Development of a Cold Gas Propulsion System for the ... - SSL - MIT

One solution to this problem would have been to run a very extensive test battery so that a large
number of data points could be grouped in different ways to isolate particular effects. For example, the
type of test for which results were plotted in Figure 6-8 could be performed for each of the 31 thruster
combinations of interest, to obtain initial thrust levels and individualized profiles of thrust decrease with
gas usage for each combination. However, this would have been very resource-intensive in a number of
ways. Each characterization test involved a range of tasks including preparing the TALARIS vehicle, filling
the flight tanks, and making safety checks before thruster firing and data collection could occur; the
process took two to four people at least one to two hours to complete. Then, the data had to be
analyzed, which took additional people and time. The cost of propellant was also a concern. The
nitrogen used in the CGSE was ordered in cylinders pressurized to 6000 psig at 70°F [58]; in terms of
moles of gas, each cylinder held slightly more nitrogen than necessary to fill the flight tanks three times.
However, a cylinder could only be used for filling if its pressure was higher than that of the flight tanks,
and as the pressure of a cylinder was depleted it became more and more difficult to use the gas inside it.
In order to mitigate this issue, several nitrogen cylinders were kept on hand and used for staged filling;
the cylinder at lowest pressure would be used to fill the flight tanks as full as possible, after which the
cylinder at next lowest pressure would be used to increase the flight tank pressure further, and so on
until the fullest cylinder simply topped the flight tanks off. This practice enabled more efficient use of
the nitrogen, but it also increased the amount of time needed for fill operations, and it was still never
possible to use all of the nitrogen in a cylinder. With all these considerations, it was simply not practical
to run 31 separate tests; even 8 to 10 tests required several weeks of work, which was a considerable
amount of time given the accelerated schedule of the TALARIS project. Thus, each of the 31
combinations was fired at least once, but only a few representative selections of the combinations were
repeated in a different order over several tests to try to identify the envelope within which the CGSE
thrust levels varied.
Maximum thrust levels
Data from single-thruster firings at the very beginning of test sequences was used to determine the
maximum thrust of each CGSE thruster, as presented in the following Table 6-1.
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