How To Protect Your Rocket?

The satellites are critical for a country’s military defense and offence. However, their launch is very susceptible to interception by a ballistic missile. During launch and at lower altitudes, the rockets are protected by the fighter jets. However, compared to the journey of a rocket, this protection is very limited.

During World War 2, the vulnerable bomber planes were escorted by fighter planes against the enemy attacks. This was the norm until the introduction of B17 Flying Fortress. B17 could defend itself and didn’t require fighter escort. This idea can be implemented on the space rockets as well. Not all rockets need to be in this configuration. However, during time of dispute and war, such self-defending rockets would be very beneficial.

A self-defending rocket can be implemented using the synergy rocket formation I proposed earlier. In short, it is a rocket formed by strapping at least three similar rockets together in a closed loop formation. With such a configuration, the rocket can carry different payloads in each of the independent payload bays and one can have anti-ballistic missiles.

Trafalgar in Space

The satellite clusters orbit the earth like a railway train pointing at the same direction. I imagined a satellite outside of this cluster at a higher orbit perpendicular to this formation. It reminded me of the Battle of Trafalgar. Then, I thought of an offensive tactic to annihilate the enemy satellite cluster.

The offensive satellite would orbit at a higher altitude than the targeted satellites. It would not have protruding solar panels to minimize damage from space debris. It would be mainly a flying propellent tank with liquid hydrogen and oxygen. The liquid hydrogen and oxygen would be used to maneuver the satellite during attack and power the electronics on board with hydrogen fuel cells. Carbon nanotube bullets would be used to shot down the enemy satellites. The bullets would be accelerated using the hydrogen and oxygen on board.

The offensive tactic would be simple dive into the targeted satellites orbit with the use of liquid propellent thrusters. During this dive the satellite would retain its orbital speed. It’s like a floating submarine dive underwater using its propellers. Once the propeller stops, the submarine would slowly surface again. In case of satellite, high orbital speed (centrifugal force overcoming the gravity) would push it back to its higher orbit slowly. Due to attacking satellite’s higher speed compared to the other satellites in that orbit, the attacker would pass over them. As it passes by it would shoot back at the satellite in target like a Mongol Archer shooting back while riding his horse. This would allow the debris to be left behind and opposite momentum generated by the bullet fire to add to the satellite's forward momentum.

Once the attacking satellite’s fuel is depleted, it would Kamikaze dive on an enemy military satellite.

The Sounds of The Universe

We have been sending explorers throughout the solar system for many years. Those explorers contained many sensors onboard. Unfortunately, microphone was not one of them (Martian Perseverance rover carries two microphones). I would like to propose a series of small solar and planetary explorers that carry multiple microphones on board. There would be different types of microphones to capture different wavelengths. Even though, the space is vacuum and sound waves cannot travel in vacuum; the electromechanical sound sensors would pick up noise. The noise would be induced by the cosmic rays, gravity fields, and many more.

People are fascinated by the highly computer enhanced images captured by Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. This fascination can be extended by the surround sound of the universe. The microphones are more durable and can operate at more extreme conditions compared to video cameras. Additionally, it is much easier to capture surround sound and play it. Almost all sound systems are stereo and there are more surround sound systems on earth than 3D TVs.

Venus and Mars have atmosphere. Martian Perseverance rover has recorded the sound of Mars. However, it is in mono and microphone’s sensitivity is limited. Flying small planetary explorers can be built to explore Venus and Mars which would record the sounds of the planets as they explore them on air. Venus’ extreme temperatures and dust storms make it difficult for a camera to operate. However, the conditions are acceptable for surround high bandwidth sound recording. Additionally, sound recording would require less electrical and processing power compared to video capture. Allowing smaller and lighter flying explorers.

Synergy Rocket Formation

I had previously proposed a synergy rocket design on April 21, 2025 and would like to improve on that design. The idea is to create synergy by combining at least three rockets in a closed formation in order to create additional thrust via air flowing between the rockets and reducing the complexity of recovering the first stage of the rocket.

In synergy rocket formation, the rockets of same type are strapped together in a closed formation. The objective is to enclose the air passing between the rockets. At the bottom of the rockets, there will be additional enclosures connecting the nozzles and directing the air flow. These enclosures will not protrude from the rocket walls not to induce additional drag. These enclosures will direct the air in line with the rockets’ direction of movement. The air passing by will be heated by the rocket nozzles to generate additional thrust like in high bypass turbofan engines. Unlike those engines, there will be no duct fan. Therefore, the thrust gain will be limited.

Strapped rockets would induce too much stress on the connection points due to differences on thrust of each rocket. In order to overcome this problem, each rocket nozzle will have controlled ventilation window that release some of the exhausted gas into the enclosed air bypass canal. As a result, thrust lost on ventilated exhaust gas on the engine nozzle will be recovered by the thrust generated by the bypassed air. This will change the direction of the thrust vector to minimize stress and improve maneuverability. Also increase the thrust generated by the bypassed air.

Only first stages of the rockets will be strapped. The upper stages will move independently after stage separation. The strapped rockets will have much higher base area compared to a single rocket. Therefore, recovering the first stage will be a much simpler problem.

Requiem

Babam 12 Aralık 1941’de Denizli’nin Tavas ilçesine bağlı Kızılcabölük kasabasında dünyaya geldi. Doğum günü sorulduğunda ses tonu hafif değişir gururlanarak oniki oniki bin dokuzyüz kırk bir derdi. Ne kadar da kolay akılda kalıcak bir doğum tarihim var der gibi söylerdi bunu. Nüfusa kayıtlı adı Mehmet Talât’tır. Ancak hayatı boyunca iki isimli olmanın çok sorun yarattığını fark edip herkese çocuklarına tek isim vermelerini tavsiye ederdi. Kızına Nevra ve oğluna da İbrahim ismini verdi. Torunun da tek ismi vardır Defne.

2016 yılı sonunda doktor muayenesinden eve geldiğinde hastalığının teşhis edildiğini ve ünlü profesörünki (Stephen Hawking) gibi ALS olduğunu sanki grip teşhisi konmuş gibi gülümseyerek söylediğini unutmuyorum. Çocukluğumda zatüre olduğumu öğrendiğimde annemlerin yatağına gidip ağladığımmı hatırlıyorum. Çok güçlü bir kişiliği vardı babamın.

Doğup büyüdüğü çevrenin çok ötesinde bir bakış açısına sahipti. Bu bakış açısı ona hem işinde hem de ailesinde başarı ve mutluluğu getirdi. Yabancı dil öğrenmenin önemini erken yaşta farkedip iki çocuğunu da Amerikan kolejinde okuttu. Babamın geniş bakış açısına layık olarak onu farklı dillerde anlatmak istedim. Kitabını da tüm dünyada satış yapan bir firma üzerinden yayınlıyorum.

Baba seni çok seviyorum, ve özlüyorum.

30 Ekim 2025, İstanbul, Türkiye

İbrahim Kocaalioğlu

Hybrid Turbofan Engine

Turbofan engines are the critical bottle neck of the aircraft designs. Lack of high thrust turbofan engines limit the payload capacity of the planes. Adding more engines is not the ideal solution. I would like to propose a hybrid high bypass turbofan engine especially for high thrust applications. The idea is to generate high thrust using already availably rocket engines and power the turbofan using the exhaust of the turbopumps of the rocket engine.

The design requires compacted rocket engines to be split into sections and modified to be adapted as a high bypass engine. Unlike air breathing turbofan engines, the hybrid engine I propose will consume liquid oxygen instead of relying on ambient air. However, large turbofan section will suck large volumes of air and increase the amount of accelerated exhaust gas. This will increase the ISP of the engine compared to a rocket engine. The turbofan will be driven by the exhaust gas of the rocket turbopumps.

Main drawback of the engine is its reduced fuel efficiency compared to traditional engines. However, designing and manufacturing very high thrust turbofans are prohibitively expensive and complex.

On the other hand, the advantages of the hybrid engine I propose are:

- They rely on already mass-produced high thrust rocket engines.

- They don’t require ambient oxygen to operate. Which increases their service ceiling.

- They can operate with liquified methane. Which is much greener than jet fuels.

If the future of aviation is hydrogen, liquid methane consuming hybrid turbofan engine would be the next step.

Hybrid Staged Rocket

Aerospace refers to the technology and industry involved with the atmosphere and outer space collectively. However, the collaboration between the aircraft and spacecraft design is below par. I would like to propose a hybrid staged rocket design. Where each stage can be reconfigured for different projects on demand.

The aircraft section of the hybrid rocket will be composed of two stages. The first stage will be powered by highly efficient high bypass turbofan engines. The delta wings will generate lift and are structurally sturdy. This is important while the wings need to lift heavy weight of the upper stages. Due to lift generated by the wings, the turbofans do not need to generate the thrust of a classical rocket’s first stage. The objective of this stage is to ascent the upper stages to the commercial aviation altitudes and speeds. Once the objective is reached and most of the fuel is consumed, the upper stages are separated. The first stage than flies back to the launch airport. This is a much simpler engineering problem compared to returning a rocket’s first stage to the launch site.

The second stage of the hybrid rocket will be a smaller delta wing with convertible ramjet engines. The engines will be fired close to Mach one during stage separation. The engines will operate in ramjet mode until Mach 4 and then they will transition to a scramjet above that speed. Unlike traditional rocket first stages, this stage will reach high speeds at lower altitudes due to air breathing nature of the engines. Once, most of the stage fuel is consumed, it will separate from the upper stages. Like the first stage, the second stage will also fly back to the launch site. Due to engines inefficiency at lower speeds, this will require more fuel. The delta wings will allow passive deceleration with improved stability.

The remaining upper stages of the rocket will have classical rocket design. They will be called high-altitude, high-speed rockets unlike the traditional ones that are launched from the ground with zero initial speed.

The first two stages of the hybrid rocket will also be used at high-speed, high-altitude testing of rockets (civil and military) and aircrafts. At the moment aircrafts with classical framing are used for this task and they are not optimal for the task.