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Liquid Air/Lox

Engine

Original archive entry. The text, images and links below are kept as they were written.

Liquid air has no advantage as a stored propellant, but in a Liquid Air Cycle Engine (LACE) relatively freely available atmospheric air is scooped up, liquefied, and burned with a fuel in a conventional rocket engine. In one variation this is replaced with stored liquid oxygen as the rocket ascends out of the atmosphere.