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/sci/ - Science & Math

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8029663 No.8029663 [Reply] [Original]

What's the world's edgiest rocket fuel?
>Legend has it that in the 1950s the USAF had to be talked out of trying FOOF and dimethylmercury

>> No.8029667

>>8029663
That's a science fiction story by Charles Stross, not an actual thing.

A coworker swears they overheard someone at a conference seriously talking about using chlorine pentafluoride as an oxidizer, though.

>> No.8029677

>>8029667
Funny I just heard about Stross the other day when researching Venusian fiction.
>chlorine pentafluoride
Why is this edgy?

>> No.8029683

>>8029677
Chlorine Trifluoride is one of the famous edgy chemicals, from the same chemist's blog where Stross got the idea.

The pentafluoride is worse.

>> No.8029698

>>8029683
One thing I want to know is why is boring shit like methane now all the rage? Why is this any better than RP-1 apart from muh Mars fueling station meme? Seems like we've become a world of pussies. We'll be using bottle rockets next.

>> No.8029711

>>8029698
LOX/LCH4 has a 3.8% higher Isp than LOX/RP-1, and is much more easily stored than LOX/LH2. Plus, there's the potential for ISRU.

The boring fuels are just better than the really exciting ones for orbital rocketry purposes; it's mostly missile propellants where the crazy ones come in, because the design constraints are different.

>> No.8029728

>>8029698
For orbital rocketry, specific impulse is king, which means liquid hydrogen is simply The Best Chemical Fuel, though its low density and boiloff problems make other fuels worth a tradeoff in reality. RP-1 is an extremely solid compromise between density and specific impulse for lower stages needing high thrust, and has good chemistry with LOX; other LOX-compatible fuels offer drawbacks and only minor performance improvements.

And beyond LOX, things like liquid fluorine are simply too nasty to work with while not offering an enormous performance boost to justify it.

>> No.8030150

why not develop a catalyst to break high energy bonds in a combustion which can be used to propel the rocket? is it because the weight of the catalyst itself would likely be too great? I don't know anything about rocketry so I couldnt tell you if I'm missing something or not.

>> No.8030177

>>8030150
Cold gas thrusters use this. Simply not enough energy to rival chemical rockets.

>> No.8030635

>>8030177
I had to look that up on Wikipedia, but I don't think that's what I'm thinking of.

What if there was some combustable, energy dense material that needed a large amount of heat to start the combustion reaction, but is aided by this hypothetical catalyst? Lowered activation energy, high energy payout from combustion of the material, and lift? I think the cold gas thruster just refers to a propellant (usually a gas) whose energy is stored in its compression.

A good visual aid for the material would be the combustion of magnesium wire or a sparkler. It takes a while to ignite because it requires more energy than, say, paper. The material I'm talking about would be very energy dense, combust relatively easily due to the catalyst, and generate lift (???)

>> No.8030766

chemists really fucking piss me off you fucks don't know shit about shit and you think you're real scientists

engineers are even worse

>> No.8030816

>>8030766
Here's your reply

>> No.8030952

>>8029667
that's what I was thinking of

>> No.8030981

>>8030766 (you)

>> No.8031785

>>8030766
>be chemist
>have theory
>apply scientific method
>justify theory
>not a scientist
I better watch out, there are chuckles about

>> No.8031827

>>8029677