Dual mode propulsion systems combine the high efficiency of bipropellant rockets with the reliability and simplicity of monopropellant rockets. Dual mode systems are either hydrazine/N2O4, or MMH/hydrogen peroxide (the former is much more common). Typically, this system works as follows: During the initial high-impulse orbit-raising maneuvers, the system operates in a bipropellant fashion, providing high thrust at high efficiency; when it arrives on orbit, it closes off either the fuel or oxidizer, and conducts the remainder of its mission in a simple, predictable monopropellant fashion.
Famous quotes containing the words dual, mode and/or rocket:
“Thee for my recitative,
Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day
declining,
Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat
convulsive,
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“The only mode of obtaining an answer to these questions of the senses is to forego all low curiosity, and, accepting the tide of being which floats us into the secret of nature, work and live, work and live, and all unawares the advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condition, and the question and the answer are one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A rocket is an experiment; a star is an observation.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)