[AR] Re: [UK OFFICIAL] Moon Express - HTP/kero

  • From: Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2017 11:30:48 -0700

On 7/14/2017 3:37 AM, Dion van Strydonck wrote:

As for alternatives, there are some nice self-pressurizing, non-lethally
toxic propellant combinations (if you want to roll biprop) like
Nitrous/Ethane, Nitrous/Propylene, etc. I know that nitrous is
definitely not a walk in the park either (Most of my work has been with
the stuff, so I may be a little biased there) and that peroxide offers a
significant density advantage, but you lose a large amount of complexity
that you'd have with a pressure-regulated system. It is of course a bit
more boring though.

I might guess that one significant reason for going for peroxide-kero in this application is that, once you budget the mass and cost of an adequate catalyst pack, ignition is dirt simple and extremely reliable.

Henry


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