[AR] Re: some interesting developments
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 19:58:17 -0500 (EST)
On Mon, 4 Jan 2016, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
... whether finding ways to mitigate the weight penalty of a biprop
system might be better bets than hoping to convince a "high energy
monopropellant" mixture that it doesn't actually want to explode.
...apparently we're not treating it as either/or bet, but pursuing
both possibilities. Which assuming DOD thinks cheap existing-carrier
aircraft airlaunch as potentially useful a capability as I would think it,
makes a great deal of sense.
Also, DoD may well be thinking that a safe non-hydrazine monopropellant
would have other uses, and this might make a nice pathfinder for it.
(For example, when I visited NASA Dryden 20-odd years ago, with
arrangements made by some inside friends, I could walk right past the NASA
SR-71s, but could see the X-31s only from a glassed-in viewing gallery in
their hangar. The difference was that the X-31s used some F-16 hardware,
including the F-16's hydrazine emergency APU, which provides get-me-down
power after an engine failure. The presence of hydrazine, even in sealed
tanks, in aircraft undergoing maintenance triggered extra safety rules,
including a ban on visitors on the hangar floor.)
Mind you, from what Mitch said at Space Access, the N2O/C2H2 is kept
chilled to about -60F, and if that's considered essential, this isn't
promising for secondary uses.
Needless to say, amateurs should NOT try this at home, unless they're
the sort of "amateurs" that can afford remote handling equipment for the
entire procedure from mixing onward.
Including contingency cases, e.g. recovering from a valve-actuator
failure. In systems with powered valves and electronic data acquisition
and such, remote operation for nominal cases is often not a big deal; what
can get tricky is being able to recover from hardware trouble without
human hands on the hardware.
Henry
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