A Fractal Manifold with Application to Rocketry
                          John Kormylo

     Rocket engines currently inject fuel and oxidizer into the 
combustion chamber using separate nozzles.  To get the most 
complete and rapid combustion, it would be better to use a grid 
of injectors of the form

HOHOHOHOHOH
OHOHOHOHOHO
HOHOHOHOHOH
OHOHOHOHOHO
HOHOHOHOHOH

where H represents a fuel injector and O represents an oxidizer 
injector.
     One way to achieve this is to form a manifold from thin 
layers, where each layer connects 5 holes on one side to 1 on the 
other:

H O H O H O H O H
 \ / / \   \ / / 
O H O H O H O H O
 / \   \ / / \   
H O H O H O H O H
   \ / / \   \ / 
O H O H O H O H O
 / / \   \ / / \ 
H O H O H O H O H

The diagonal lines show the locations of slanted holes drilled 
through the layer, where the hole on the other side is directly 
under the center hole of each cluster.
     Note that every hole (except those on the outside rows) is 
part of a cluster, and that fuel lines connect only to other fuel 
lines and oxidizer lines connect only to other oxidizer lines.  
If one were to plot the locations of the holes on the other side, 
they would again form a grid as in the first diagram (only 
further apart and rotated).  The pattern for the clusters shown 
here is 2 holes to the right and 1 up.  Both the grid distances 
and the hole diameters increase by the sqrt(5) across the layer.
     One could connect a series of such layers together, starting 
from one oxidizer and 4 fuel lines at one end, and the other end 
limited in number only by the minimum size of a hole one can 
drill diagonally through a thin layer, or the ability to get the 
holes to line up between layers, or the ability to keep the 
layers from separating under pressure.
     It might be a good idea to add one layer of straight, 
tapered holes at the end to handle the flow transition and heat 
transfer.