J-2X Engine

The museum displayed a J-2X rocket engine for a time in the Davidson Center. It must have been on a relatively short-term loan, as the Center no longer displays the engine.

Before Barack Obama cancelled Project Constellation, the J-2X was to be used on the upper stages of the the Ares I and Ares V boosters. For a short time after the cancellation, the engine was to be used in the SLS Exploration Upper Stage, before the decision to instead use modern versions of the RL-10 rocket engine for this purpose.

The J-2X program was to evolve the heritage of the J-2 rocket engine, although the list of improvements (removal of beryllium, a centrifugal turbo pump versus the axial turbo pump of the J-2, different chamber and nozzle expansion ratios, a channel-walled combustion chamber versus the tube-welded chamber of the J-2, use of a nozzle extension, redesign of all the electronics, a gas generator and supersonic main injector based on the RS-68, and the use of 21st-century joining techniques) certainly makes it seem more like a clean-slate engine.

The program got fairly far along prior to its cancellation, with various tests being performed on the historic test stands (built for the Saturn program) at Stennis Space Center.

As of now, I have not yet sorted through all of my pictures of the J-2X, but some other page references this location. Thus, this is a "place holder" version right now, with only the pictures actually referenced. Come back some time later to see if I've finished up, or drop me an email to request me to prioritize the rest of these pictures.