Rocket Propulsion Elements

The definitive text on rocket propulsion—now revised to reflect advancements in the field

For sixty years, Sutton's Rocket Propulsion Elements has been regarded as the single most authoritative sourcebook on rocket propulsion technology. As with the previous edition, coauthored with Oscar Biblarz, the Eighth Edition of Rocket Propulsion Elements offers a thorough introduction to basic principles of rocket propulsion for guided missiles, space flight, or satellite flight. It describes the physical mechanisms and designs for various types of rockets' and provides an understanding of how rocket propulsion is applied to flying vehicles.

Updated and strengthened throughout, the Eighth Edition explores:

• The fundamentals of rocket propulsion, its essential technologies, and its key design rationale

• The various types of rocket propulsion systems, physical phenomena, and essential relationships

• The latest advances in the field such as changes in materials, systems design, propellants, applications, and manufacturing technologies, with a separate new chapter devoted to turbopumps

• Liquid propellant rocket engines and solid propellant rocket motors, the two most prevalent of the rocket propulsion systems, with in-depth consideration of advances in hybrid rockets and electrical space propulsion

Comprehensive and coherently organized, this seminal text guides readers evenhandedly through the complex factors that shape rocket propulsion, with both theory and practical design considerations. Professional engineers in the aerospace and defense industries as well as students in mechanical and aerospace engineering will find this updated classic indispensable for its scope of coverage and utility.

George P. Sutton is a consultant for the aerospace industry. He formerly served as executive director of engineering at Rocketdyne (Rocketdyne Division of The Boeing Company, now Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne) and as a laboratory associate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Oscar Biblarz is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mechanical and Astronautical Engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.