Firestar out in Mojave is pursuing something similar, nitrous-acetylene
premix for a high-performance monopropellant with proprietary herbs and
spices that allegedly stabilize it adequately under under some range of
conditions and when used exclusively with their hardware. They've even
been able to show good enough (theoretical) stability that they obtained
(theoretical) permission to eventually fly a small propulsion demo on
Station.
That last impressed me - Station management is pretty damn conservative
about what they'll (provisionally) allow on board. They must have seen
some convincing explanation as to why the stuff might actually be made
reliably stable. (Mind, I'd be amazed if any such thing ever actually
passes the practical proofs of safety JSC would insist on before
actually flying it.)
So, somewhere there's a fairly convincing explanation of why this stuff
is different. Hard to say any more though without actually seeing the
(proprietary and/or classified) explanation. (Well, realistically,
before seeing what independent experts say after seeing the explanation.)
Henry
On 11/30/2015 2:17 PM, David Weinshenker wrote:
Hmmm - nitrous oxide and acetylene (!), "'pre-mixed' to
reduce the plumbing needed on the rocket"... seems odd
that this would even be expected to work in the first
place, since neat acetylene is already too explosive
to handle as a condensed liquid or even as a compressed
(more than slightly) gas... what were they thinking? (Were
they hoping that "diluting" it with N2O might stabilize
against that or something?
-dave w
-----Original Message-----
From: George Herbert <george.herbert@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Nov 30, 2015 12:51 PM
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: "george.herbert@xxxxxxxxx" <george.herbert@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [AR] ALASA cancelled because...
The DARPA ALASA launcher appears to have been cancelled (rolled back to tech
development) because Boeing used a less stable variation on my
Poly-Acetyl-Ozone propellant technology of a decade ago and, well, ...
As Chris Carson commented a bit ago on Facebook, "Where's my Earth-Shattering Kaboom?.."
"Oh, there it is."
http://spacenews.com/darpa-airborne-launcher-effort-falters/
https://web.archive.org/web/20121109235533/http://www.retro.com/hooocch/acezone.html
George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone
