Is there anything, short of not using solid-fueled rockets that can be done to reduce slag ejection?
Caveat lector: I'm thinking out loud, and this probably comes under advanced, back-of-envelope concepts.Would it be hard to engineer some kind of temperature triggered buckling of the inside walls of the combustion chamber to kind of 'seal the solid rocket motor' after burnout?Here's how I picture it to work. Picture a cylinder of some kind of thermosetting material that sits between the grain and the outer surface of the SRM (more toward the nozzle, than the top). If you design the grain geometry appropriately, specifically - calculate your thermal conductivities right, you can probably pick a material that reaches some sort of setting temperature after x minutes of booster operation.Coupled with the drop in chamber pressure, this can then buckle inward and seal off the nozzle from a lot of the slag. Now, instead of a ring, you can have them longitudinally offset, like petals or something and flaps. Heck, it can even be a bimetallic strip that bends after a certain time, and once chamber pressure has dropped /| ________________/_|____//| Slag \ Slag / --- \|________\___/__________ -- ---- \ | \ \|Of course, the stress/temperature endurance and transition points required might be unavailable with current materials, it might impair booster performance if there's premature deployment or mechanical failure, and it might just not be worth the effort. Having typed it out, now it striked even me as cartoonish. lol----Alternatively, would electrostatic precipitators work?
Thus, nearly a third of the thrust comes from slag ejection.