[AR] methane (was Re: Falcon Heavy use cases)

  • From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2018 17:58:52 -0500 (EST)

On Thu, 8 Feb 2018, John Schilling wrote:

And like LOX, on a flight stage, methane shouldn't require insulation...

But you lose some of that benefit with the extra precautions you have to take against inadvertent mixing of fuel and oxidizer.  Which is always bad, but extraordinarily bad when they are miscible in a common liquid temperature range.

Yes, a good point. Like using alcohol fuels with peroxide, using methane with LOX loses you some fault tolerance, which can make life undesirably exciting when things go wrong. It's a feature, not a bug, if your fuel and oxidizer can't quietly mix and form a liquid explosive.

Henry

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