No Solid Rocket Propellant

This may be ASB, but I want it discussed in a serious manner.

What if large rockets were only propelled with liquid fuels? What effects would this have on ballistic missiles, space programs, etc?

How could this come about, with a POD no earlier than, say, 1946?
 
Someone better tell the Chinese and also the fireworks manufacturers. Can't quite see why a small solid rocket engine wouldn't work if scaled up in size.

However, most large scale rockets are liquid propellent. The WI would throw a big wrench into the development of ICBMs. Unless I'm entirely mistaken without the adoption of solid fuel much of each underground complex would be huge fuel tanks and one would have to fill the rockets in the event of a nuclear strike and hope they can top them off and fire them off in time.

The NASA shuttle would be entirely different without its solid fuel boosters. Probably a lot more complex in the end - but one wouldn't necessarily have to worry about brittle O-rings.

Frankly, someone would eventually come up with solid fuel. On the whole they are more inexpensive to operate and cheaper.
 
Truax has written about the Big Dumb Booster alternatives. I call my concept "The Proxmire", for Propane Oxygen Minimal Research.
Specific Impulse and specific density are tradeoffs. H2/O2 Turbopump is very high specific impulse, but very low specific density. Solid Fuels are the other way around. C2H6/O2 Pressurefed is pretty middling, has low cost, and is a lot simpler than either of the other two designs. No toxic waste output, no ultracold cryogenic technology, no incredibly high power density turbopump machinery, etc.
 
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The Titan ICBM and lots of Soviet ICBMs well into the present are liquid fueled. They use storable liquid for fuel which gives them instant launch capability and long periods, weeks or months, on alert. However rapid reaction is possible even without storable liquid. The concept for the Blue Streak was interesting; the LOX was kept on board with a system for collecting and re-liquifying the LOX boiloff. The Kerosene fuel was stored offboard and 'blown' on with pressurised gas so the rocket would be fueled within 3 minutes.

The real problems would lie with SLBMs and SRBMs.
 

Archibald

Banned
Don't foreget that many, many air-to-ground, antiship, A2A missiles use small solid boosters. Can't really them propelled by liquid propellants...
 
Weren't there a number of liquid propelled smaller missiles? I'm hazy, but I'm sure there were a few in the early days, before solids just ran away with it.
Anyway, there are several other options for tactical ordinance; glide bombs, ramjets, miniature turbojets and miniature liquid fueled rocket engines.

Without solid rockets SAMs would stay big enough to be liquid fuelled and medium calibre guns would be the next layer down.
 
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