So educate me.

The vehicle in question will be boosted to Mach 0.3-0.4 wherein a turbine engine will take over. As the vehicle is really just a subscale model being built on a shoestring budget (shoestring is relative, I concede) I'm trying to use consumer level products (ie, COTS) to keep costs down. But as I understand it, consumer level turbines have a start up protocol that takes about a minute to complete. This is unacceptable to me. I am accustomed to small turbines (for me, small means 500 lbf thrust) that start up in 3-5 seconds.

Fast start up CAN be done. The question is can it be done with a minor tweak to a consumer level turbine. It occurs to me that replacing propane with silane may kick the normal start up procedure in the proverbial ass and get things moving in something that resembles a reasonable time frame. I wonder this because a simple gas replacement is trivial. If, on the other hand, large modifications are required to get a quick start up, well then I may as well abandon the consumer level approach.

But while I have access to world-class minds on many topics inherent to the implied topic, my sources aren't used to dealing with consumer level hardware. Thus, I come here to ask questions.



(FWIW, my prior exposure to silane is usage as an ignitor for a vitiated air blowdown facility)