I agree about the solid rocket motor.
My point Apollo 13 Lessons Learned.
Store the Oxygen as a solid, not a Liquid or Gas.
On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 4:46 PM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Thu, 30 Apr 2020, Craig Fink wrote:
Because nobody has ever been able to build leakproof tanks?
(Hint: the Voyagers have been in flight for 43 years and their
hydrazine tanks are still doing just fine.)
I don't think you understand. There are no holes in Voyagers tanks, like
what occurred on Apollo 13.
Indeed, which indicates that fears of holes in tanks are exaggerated.
It's not a sufficiently common problem that it should drive your design.
Incidentally, a hole in a solid's chamber is not good news either, and is
probably rather harder to fix, since the patch has to take high pressures
and high temperatures.
...Just patch the hole with no propellant leakage...
And no propellant cracking? (Remember, cracks in solid fuel tend to end
in motor explosions.) Not to mention cracking or other damage to the
chamber wall and the hot-gas insulation inside it.
seriously, what if I am breathing one of the Propellants?
What if the hole is in your cabin wall, and you're breathing vacuum? If
you're going to worry about holes in anything, worry about that.
The gasoline in your car's tank is volatile, flammable, explosive if mixed
with air, poisonous, and carcinogenic. But the design makes (fairly) sure
that it doesn't get into the passenger compartment. If you can live with
this hazard in your car, you can live with it in your spacecraft.
Henry
