Solid propellant rocket research : a Selection of Technical Papers based mainly on a Symposium of the American Rocket Society held at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, January 28, 29, 1960

This paper presents various approaches to grain design and development of very large solid propellant rocket motors, and introduces characteristic problems resulting from the size, weight, transportation limitations and propellant physical properties. To illustrate the problems in large solid propellant engines and an approach to their analysis, the design of a two million pound thrust motor using 720,000 pounds of propellant with typical physical properties was selected to give realistic quantitative solutions. Since transportation of a complete unit of this size is impractical, two approaches are considered: a single grain design utilizing on-site casting methods, and a modular design using multiple portable grains which are assembled at the launching site.