[AR] Re: Spacex AMOS6....
- From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2016 23:29:16 -0700
On Fri, Sep 23, 2016 at 10:08 PM,William Claybaugh
<wclaybaugh2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carbon composite is just the new code phrase for "rags"....
Ouch!
I don't know if the He tank was composite or not, but I kind of suspect it was.
If the He tank burst, the vehicle (and payload) were doomed anyway,
but I kind of suspect bursting got parts of the He tank hot enough to
react with the LOX it had been soaking in for some time.
Decades ago Eric Drexler and I proposed aluminum and silica fiber
composites for O'Neill cylinders. Optimum design cracked the fibers
at intervals so that a failure would cause the fibers to pull out,
deforming a lot of metal and soaking up energy. If one of them did
burst, you could expect the pulled out fibers to be very hot. The
same may apply to composite He tanks.
I appreciate your comment.
Keith
Bill
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