Black Knight (rocket)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Black Knight

Black Knight was a British experimental rocket . It was built by Saunders-Roe in one and two stages. The single-tier Black Knight was 10.2 m long and 91 cm in diameter. This rocket, which weighed 5.4 t at launch, could reach a height of 800 km. It was founded in 1958 and 1959 by Woomera u. a. also started for re-entry tests. It was developed in parallel with the Blue Streak because the Black Knight was supposed to test warheads for it. The Black Knight was unique in terms of drive technology . As fuel she used Oxidator HTP, a fuel that the Germans had already used in some experimental rockets. This fuel burned very strongly, which greatly simplified the design of their gamma engines.

There was also a two-stage Black Knight, which used a Cuckoo IB with a specific impulse of 360 kNs as a starting stage. This rocket was 11.6 m long and weighed 6.35 t when launched. A later version used the Cuckoo-2 with a specific impulse of 360 kNs as a launch stage. The two-tier Black Knight was launched fifteen times in Woomera between 1960 and 1965.

Web links

Commons : Black Knight  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Sparrow, Giles., Evening, Bernhard ,: Adventure space travel: [50 years of expeditions into space] . Dorling Kindersley, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8310-1089-9 .