It does seem like the solicitation is written for the one company (that I'm
aware of) that has a road-trailerable orbital rocket concept, Vector. Are
there others? Would air-launched rockets such as Virgin Orbit's fit DARPA's
requirements?
On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 6:35 PM, Jake Anderson <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 23/04/18 13:32, Henry Spencer wrote:
A metallic hydrogen hybrid, that sounds like fun.
There was a brief surge of interest in this and other "free radical"
propellants at one point in the 50s, and that may be where Heinlein got the
idea. Toward the end of that, as reality started to set in, the concepts
were things like modest percentages of H frozen in solid hydrogen, perhaps
in a slurry in liquid helium, perhaps in a strong magnetic field. Which
might make it a bit less impossible to preserve the stuff, but would also
reduce performance to the point that it's quite likely not worth it.
Metallic hydrogen (or Bob Forward's metastable helium), if it's stable at
reasonable pressures once made, does seem more appealing.
Henry
For somebody else to try, somewhere a long way from me.
Presuming it needed some level of pressure to contain it might as well use
that pressure vessel for your rocket right?
Or do you just go the whole hog and make a SOX (Solid Oxygen) / Metallic
hydrogen solid rocket and call it a day.