Large Diameter Solid Booster

Solid boosters are high aspect ratio rockets strapped around a liquid rocket. There are several problems with this design. Strapping them around a rocket would increase the air drag. Additionally, a catastrophic failure of a strapped booster would ignite the liquid rocket which was the case with Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

I propose the solid boosters to be added as the initial stages of a rocket. The idea came to my mind when I was thinking about the structure of a rocket. The bottom section of a rocket would carry all the weight of the rocket. Therefore, they have to be strongly build. This is the case with solid boosters as well. The walls of a booster need to withstand internal high pressure. As a result, the boosters placed at the bottom would support the weight of the rocket with no additional strengthening requirement. The highest thrust requirement of a rocket which is at takeoff would be delegated to boosters which they are good at. This reduces the maximum thrust requirement on the liquid propulsion engines.

Additionally, placing the boosters at the bottom reduces the possibility of an explosion to reach the liquid propulsion tanks at the top. An explosion would initiate the release mechanism of the stage below which would further decrease the possibility of a disaster.

The solid propellant will be separated by thin Tungsten walls because both sides of the wall will have similar pressure. The objective is to restrict the combustion volume of each section to balance the thrust among the sections. As a result, the solid booster will have multiple nozzles to generate more even thrust below the rocket. This will allow large diameter solid boosters.