Yeah if you can melt the fuel, no need to melt the oxidizer, or vice
versa. Is there an accessible amateur analog for card gap testing? I
imagine not given the need for a detonation to initiate the test.
On the sugar list one contributor was doing a well-known bad chemistry
and found that it could be set off with a few hammer blows, which for
me puts it at approximately the "hell no" gradation on the
TATP-to-water spectrum of hazardous propellants.
And sorry to keep mentioning it, but KNSB is that perfect
steam-heatable propellant; sorbitol melts at 95C. But as far as I know
everyone just uses electric heat because it's relatively insensitive
to higher temperatures. If only its performance was closer to APCP
than black powder.
On Fri, Jul 10, 2020 at 9:52 AM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 10 Jul 2020, James Fackert wrote:
If you could find a euctectic mix of oxidizers that melted at around
100' C, and asphalt or euctectic sugar or peg with similar melt temp...
No solid loading issues, no significant amount of mixed propellant
outside the motor, no voids issues.
If they weren't miscible, there'd be a strong tendency for the liquid to
separate into two layers. If they were miscible, even somewhat, or if you
could do something like an emulsion to get them intimately mixed
temporarily regardless... then the liquid would almost certainly be an
explosive, and it might stay that way when solidified.
A report on the results would be interesting reading, provided the work
was done by someone else at least 50 miles away from me. :-)
The whole *point* of composite propellants is that the fuel and oxidizer
don't mix *too* intimately.
Henry