An engineer I worked with, that had worked with rockets for far longer than
I have been alive once had a contaminated LOX ball valve detonate on him.
He said he cleaned the valve but was in a hurry. He had a feeling the valve
might not be sufficiently clean after he put it into service. So instead of
actuating it with his closed hand he used the back of his hand to actuate
the valve. The valve detonated and burned the skin off the back of his
hand; but no permanent damage done other than a little bit of scarring. He
said using the back of his hand had saved his fingers, but he wished he had
thought to actuate the valve with a 2X4 instead!
He was a really fun person to talk with!
On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 12:49 PM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Mon, 4 Jan 2016, Robert Watzlavick wrote:
... What do you think would actually happen if you loaded LOX into a tank
or lines that had some oil in them? Would there be any warning (giant
woosh out the vent), catch the metal on fire, or explode?
Maybe nothing; the LOX/oil mixture could just sit there waiting for
something to prod it into exploding. Witness the X-1s and X-2s that flew
for years with treated-leather gaskets oozing organic goo into their LOX
tanks, with only a few mysterious explosions. (Finally one of those
explosions happened *on the ground*, where the pieces could be recovered
and the problem investigated thoroughly enough to uncover the cause.)
Once it starts going, it's not likely to politely give you a warning to
back off. If it's already had a chance to mix, it'll explode. If not,
it'll burn, and that might or might not be hot enough to progress to a
metal fire -- depends on many details, like what the metal is and how much
LOX is present. (Almost any metal will burn in LOX once it gets well
started, but some are much harder to start than others, and most of them
won't burn well in air once the LOX runs out.)
Best to make very sure that you don't find out.
Henry
