Solid Rocket Boosters

Hardik Shah Hardik Shah April 07, 2022

Solid Rocket Boosters

SOLID ROCKET BOOSTERS

First things first, Textbook definitions

A Solid Rocket Booster(SRB) is a large solid-propellant motor used to provide thrust in spacecraft launches from the initial launch through the first ascent.

In simple terms, these are big, thick, bulky extra thrusters that contribute to the rocket's ascent upwards into space. The SRBs have always been the hot topic for table discussion in the category of controversial topics. It is because they have quite a few advantages and an equivalent amount of disadvantages.

Advantages:

In comparison to liquid propellant rockets, the strong-propellant SRBs had been capable of imparting huge amounts of thrust with an enormously simple design. They offer extra thrust without widespread refrigeration and insulation necessities and produce massive amounts of thrust in comparison to the size. Adding detachable SRBs to the vehicle powered by means of liquid propellant rockets unnecessarily increases the launch mass and complexity.

Disadvantages:

Unlike Liquid Propellant boosters or cold-gas propulsion systems, these boosters are uncontrolled. This means, that once ignited, they won't stop until they exhaust. Therefore, if you want to test a solid rocket booster, either you need to be prepared to waste one, or rely on luck for its success. This also implies that launch abort systems cannot be implied to this system. The chemical composition they use is a hundred times more polluting than liquid-fuel rockets.

So who uses this piece of tech?

From ISRO to NASA, everybody is in love with this technology. Though they are useless, polluting pieces of tech, they are still being put to use on moon and mars missions. So, enough of blabbering. The final decision, they are descent. Not too good, nor too bad.

So, with that, I am taking a leave! Hey, it's Hardik, signing off.