Scottish Scientists Develop Self-Eating Rockets

British researchers have tested a prototype self-eating rocket that could pave the way for cheaper launches of small satellites and would leave no debris behind.

The rocket engine, called Ouroborous-3 after the ancient mythical creature that eats its own tail, was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Glasgow in the UK. I Photo: University of Glasgow

The rocket engine, called Ouroborous-3 after the ancient mythical creature that eats its own tail, was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Glasgow in the UK, Tereza Pultarova reported for Space.com.

The concept, originally proposed in the 1930s, was shown to be feasible in previous studies done in cooperation between the Glasgow team and researchers at the Dnipro National University in Ukraine.

Since then, however, the teams have gone their separate ways. The Ukrainian development has spun out a company called Promin Aerospace, which has tested its own self-eating concept rocket in a lab and is currently looking for funding.

The rocket made by the Glasgow team burns gaseous oxygen and liquid propane in its engine.

As the engine heats up, it melts the rocket's supporting structure made of a plastic tube and burns it too.

By burning this plastic, the rocket gains an additional 5 to 16 percent of fuel. As a result, the rocket can be lighter when it launches and have more room for payloads. Since the rocket burns most of its structure, it doesn't produce as much debris as other rockets.

Standard rockets contain fuel in separate stages. When a stage runs out of fuel, it gets dropped and either falls back to Earth or remains in orbit and turns into orbital debris.

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