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RX (rocket family)

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The RX rocket family (Roket Eksperimental) is a series of solid-fuel rockets developed by the Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Space. They are simply named by their diameter in millimeters; for example, the RX-250 has a diameter of 250 mm.

Contents

Individual boosters

This family is composed of:

RX-250 was launched eight times from 1987 to 2007. RX-320 was launched twice in 2008 and once again in 2014. RX-420 flew just once in 2009; it is superseded by RX-450 which was launched on 13 May 2015 As of May 2016, the next booster version RX-550 is under construction; the larger ones are only on the drawing board.

Multi-stage rockets

Once the solid boosters are fully qualified, LAPAN plans to assemble several of them into multi-stage rockets called Roket Pengorbit Satelit or RPS. Four staging configurations have been retained so far:

  • RPS-01 Variant 1 (ex-RPS-420)
    1. First stage: 3 x RX-420
    2. Second stage: 1 x RX-420
    3. Third stage: 1 x RX-420 (shorter)
    4. Fourth stage: 1 x RX-320
  • Total height: 10.00 m
  • RPS-01 Variant 2b
    1. First stage: 1 x RX-550 + 2 x RX-420
    2. Second stage: 1 x RX-550
    3. Third stage: 1 x RX-320
  • Total height: 15.75 m
  • RPS-01 Variant 3a
    1. First stage: 1 x RX-450
    2. Second stage: 1 x RX-450
  • Total height: 10.75 m
  • RPS-01 Variant 3b
    1. First stage: 1 x RX-450 + 2 x RX-320
    2. Second stage: 1 x RX-450
    3. Third stage: 1 x RX-320
  • Total height: 11.75 m

    • Earlier plans for the Pengorbitan-1 and -2 orbital launch vehicles (a.k.a. RPS-420) were based on the RX-420 engine which has been superseded by the RX-450. As of May 2016, integration work is proceeding on variants 3a and 3b, whose engines have all been successfully flight-qualified.

    References

    RX (rocket family) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA