A rocket-geek recollection on stoichiometry and flight-propellant reserve from Wayne Hale. The other day he tweeted that he’d been looking through his old files from Shuttle days and was wondering if there’d be a market for a book. I think there would be.
4 thoughts on “STS-93”
Comments are closed.
I’m a big believer in institutional memory. Thank you Wayne Hale for at least writing it down in a blog. Someday there may be no more NASA but there will still likely be the equivalent of the Wayback Machine. But a book would be better…
Just an FYI in case some might miss it; the linked post is the first of a multi-part on on STS-93, and to get to the next installment (of several) you need to click on “STS-93, dodging golden bullets” just under the banner.
One thing in the first part puzzles me a lot, and I’ve come up dry finding an answer. It’s this;
“If you look at the burning of Hydrogen and Oxygen – the second highest energy release possible on the Periodic Table –”
What is the highest? Obviously he does not mean nuclear, so what’s the chemical combination with a higher energy release than H2 LOX?
My guess is he means lithium/fluorine, which along with hydrogen injection set the world record for ISP in a rocket engine at 542.
That has to be the trifecta of problematical rocket fuel. Temperature, pressure, corrosiveness, toxicity, density, and pyrophoric flammability issues. A pad fire with this unholy trinity would consume not only the rocket and launch pad (including the concrete and steel) but the sand around it and the water next to that… Where’s my running shoes?
Back in the days of ethyl alcohol rocket fuel, two technicians are prepping a rocket on a test stand at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. Some of the rocket fuel is leaking from a pipe fitting, one of the technicians, one of the locals with more than a passing familiarity of moonshine whiskey, tastes it and exclaims, “This stuff is pretty good.” Pretty soon they are catching the drips in cups and having themselves a party.
The next morning, one of the techs gets a phone call from his friend.
“You feeling OK.”
“Yeah, I feel great — the stuff must have been really pure because I am not hung over or anything.”
“That may be so, but whatever you do, don’t pass any gas — I am calling you from White Sands!”