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I think there's some stuff in a book called Ignition about experiments using Fluorine as an oxidizer in rocket engines to get a little better specific impulse t
by api 2y ago
I think there's some stuff in a book called Ignition about experiments using Fluorine as an oxidizer in rocket engines to get a little better specific impulse than oxygen. Only problem is that the exhaust is hydrofluoric acid at thousands of degrees. Yipe.
- chasd00 2y ago> a book called Ignition that book is really good and has some interesting hidden treasures, like a couple of sentences about adding silicon oil to the fuel mixture to create a self-ablating film on the combustion chamber. I think some amateur bi-prop engine guys use that in their fuel setups. It's funny how the book ends after all that research and exotic chemicals with JP-1 and liquid O2 are still pretty much the best combination.
- wiredfool 2y agoAnd the bit about using dimethyl mercury as a monopropellant.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nottorp 2y agoIgnition has that lovely paragraph about some fluorine based fuel leaking out of the truck that was transporting it* and going through the road surface and then through the half a meter of concrete and stone under the asphalt, alien style. * the only way to move that fuel was in a refrigerated cistern... at a temp so low that the steel it was made of became brittle and cracked. I think it's quoted in one of Derek Lowe's articles about fluorine compounds too.
- api 2y agoRetcon: the Xenomorphs were a form of life based around fluorine chemistry, which provides a physically plausible mechanism for how their blood eats through anything. Of course that breaks the idea of them incubating in humans, since their biochemistry would react explosively with ours, but that never made sense anyway.
- euroderf 2y agoSome sort of out-of-this-world placenta there.
- perihelions 2y agohttps://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo...
- UncleSlacky 2y agoObligatory dowmload link: https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
- perihelions 2y agoFrom memory, that book went in at least four different directions with fluorine compounds. Parts are about increasing specific impulse; parts are about increasing density impulse (fluorine's very dense); parts are about formulating oxidizers hypergolic with kerosene or with hydrogen; parts are about formulating oxidizers for deep space probes, with a melting/boiling point range matched to that thermal environment. O3F2 is the one that if you add it to liquid oxygen, it makes hydrogen/oxygen combustion hypergolic. Direct link: (.pdf) https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
- wiredfool 2y agoThere's also adding a bit of Flourine to one of the Fuming Nitric Acids to make it easier to handle, because of the flouridation of the surface of the tanks.
- api 2y ago> O3F2 is the one that if you add it to liquid oxygen, it makes hydrogen/oxygen combustion hypergolic. O3F2 sounds like it'd be hypergolic with engineers. Nope.