[AR] Re: LOX-Methane Kabooms
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 24 May 2016 13:21:22 -0400 (EDT)
On Tue, 24 May 2016, George Herbert wrote:
The ATF website relates to high explosives, rather than rocket fuels, right?
Yes. The worst worst case would be complete, effective mixing of the
propellants to a single mass of liquid, slush, or gel which is
catastrophically detonatable in bulk. Ignition could rapidly cause
detonation in bulk.
Which is unfortunately not too far-fetched, at least for part of the
propellant load, for LOX/methane. It's not utterly impossible even for
LOX/kerosene -- I'm told that one early Atlas failure involved an actual
detonation -- and having the two propellants at the same temperature and
fully miscible sure seems like it would make it easier.
Henry
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