Hypergolic Fuels - The Chemistry of a Rocket Launch
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- Опубліковано 7 жов 2024
- Chemist Andrea Sella combines dimethylhydrazine with dinotrogen tetroxide to show how hypergolic mixtures fire rockets into space.
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There are a few ways to use chemistry to power a rocket, but all involved an oxider and a fuel. And with no oxygen in space, what’s the best solution? Professor Andrea Sella from University College London discusses the solid state boosters of the space shuttle, the cryogenic liquid approach used in the 1970s, and demonstrates to dramatic effect the power that hypergolic reactions can provide.
Hypergolic mixtures spontaneously ignite, remove the need for a spark in space, and give a huge relative reaction. Andrea combines nitrogen dioxide and dimethylhydrazine to demonstrate how just a tiny amount of these substances can pack a powerful punch.
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That has to be THE most annoying background music, in the whole history of this channel ...
+zaprodk If Dial-Up internet had a soundtrack... ;)
+SimplyChem It does actually sound like a dial up modem.
+BariumCobaltNitrog3n It IS a dial-up modem-sound. What ticks me off is how loud it is - especially around 04:20
Completely agree.
zaprodk OMG, I was going to say if it continued for a minute longer, I was going to start a killing spree.
I'd recommend finding a copy of "Ignition!" by John D. Clark. Said by many to be the funniest technical book ever written. N2O2 is a pussycat compared to some of the Hypergolic oxidisers they've tried. The section on Chlorine Trifluoride is side splitting.
"It's also hypergolic with things such as cloth, wood and test engineers not to mention asbestos, sand, and water - with which it reacts explosively"
"burned through a foot of concrete and the gravel underneath" is enough to give anyone pause... aside from rocket scientists who apparently wanted to stick it in a bottle with something flammable and launch it.
The book is an absolute stunner, it's funny, informative, and sometimes downright 'WTF!'
Came here after reading "Ignition!" by John D. Clark.
If you're interested in learning exactly HOW all of these reactions were discovered, refined, and deployed (as well as hearing some funny + scary anecdotes about these truly awful chemicals) you should give it a read.
Bought Ignition! last year and absolutely was not disappointed. The Monopropelant section was especially good.
Thank you, friend, for translating this video into French, we think you're the best. Merci beaucoup!
cut the background junk music!!!
does it offend you?
+James Walker offend? its bad and distracting
+James Walker no, as kaimells and others said - it's distracting. Poor choice for an otherwise great video.
+farvision Or at least turn down the volume of it. The music on its own is okay, but terribly distracting when watching an education video.
subductionzone The music on its own is still awful
Great video, minus the super-distracting music
Did the fax ever come through?
Sounds like my phone ringing
More vids like this please. Also don't be afraid to go into more detail.
Rocket Science: Safety Third.
Delta V first.
Rocket science, where ∆v is Nr. 1 priority :D
Because no one like rosted nuts!
If safety was first, they would just stay home!
Freakschwimmer ze goggles! They do nothink!
Literally thought the same thing
FYI, Saturn V First stage burnt RP1 and LOX. Cryogenics were used only in the upper stages.
+VikramJeet Das Technically, LOx is cryogenic. Though yes, the term is not usually applied when only the oxidizer is cryogenic, as LOx is used so frequently as to make the term all but useless in the literature, otherwise.
Also, the Shuttle main engine burned liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
And your hydrazine-(NH2)2 reaction powered the Lunar Module Ascent Stage to leave the Moon. Absolutely reliable starting was essential! And the engines intended to fly could NOT be tested on the ground, since those fuels would corrode the plumbing. The DESIGN was tested, but each engine could only be started safely ONCE!
*(cough)* RCS....
@@allanrichardson1468 Soviet ICBMs used hypergolics as fuel. Ever heard of SS-18? Back then Soviet metallurgy was more advanced than American, so they could afford to store rockets fueled with hypergolics for several years.
Volo Didn’t know that! Maybe the Apollo engineers knew that the LEM ascent stage engine would PROBABLY be OK after a test (and after waiting to be launched), but were being extra cautious. Apparently they decided that with such a simple design, “just mix and wait a second,” there was a greater risk from storing an “empty” but contaminated engine than from the triggering circuits (probably including a backup or two) failing to open the valves.
Soviets were somewhat more likely to take risks anyway. An exploding ICBM would be less damaging than being stuck on the Moon.
This looks like the least desirable fuel option from a safety standpoint.
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky the point of hypergolic fuels is that you can relight them an infinite amount. you don't need to bring something to ignite the hydrogen and oxygen. just open the valves and it burns
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky It seems like a very controllable method so I would say this is better than the previous fuel solutions I've heard of :)
Marinus the dangerous part is that if something goes wrong at lauch those might get into contact and explode very violently. unlike liquid hydrogen (or kerosine as is actually used for most first stages) and liquid oxygen
+whoeveriam0iam14222 I don't think you should compare in this way, I've seen a lot of exploding rocketships that use the conventional fuel ;)
+moniker127 Plus valves that work at moderate temperatures are generally much more reliable than ones that have to deal with a cryogenic fuel. Plus if you don't use your liquid hydrogen fairly quickly I do believe that it will boil off. Besides being well insulated one way to keep the remaining hydrogen liquid is to allow the hydrogen gasses to vent. That is also another possible failure point that is not necessary with hypergolic fuels.
Kerbals use Coke and Mentos.
no... they use MORE BOOSTERS!!!
*MOAR
Lol
3:00-4:00 it's fine to have a short distinctive, discordant bit at the intro, but playing it for a solid minute over narration...
thanks for the shout out to engineers at the end :)
+Silvan Geissmann Wolowitz is that you? ;)
The Saturn 5 first stage, was Kerosene and Liquid Oxygen (not Liquid Hydrogen+Oxygen). The upper stages were Liquid Hydrogen and Oxygen.
As an experiment, I built a very small hypergolic, gaseous fuel rocket engine - Acetylene and Chlorine gases. Worked very well.
"It happens SOO fast...." was waiting for a slow motion shot.
Video needs a slow motion shot. Now I want to know HOW fast.
The LGM-25C Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, which was stored in USAF/SAC hardened launch-silos in close-proximity to civilian farms and homes in the Deep South, utilized two distinct hypergolic propellants; one for each of the two rocket stages. The first stage used Aerozine 50 + dinitrogen tetroxide propellant. The second/upper stage used A-50 Hydrazine + dinitrogen tetroxide propellant. These hypergolic propellants are extremely terrifying and require the utmost care in handling to prevent spontaneous ignition when mixed. LGM-25C Titan II ICBMs, were tipped with the W-53 thermonuclear (hydrogen-bomb) warhead. The W-53 was capable of a 9 MT detonation (blast force equivalent to 9 million tons of TNT) and was designed to impact the ground and send shockwaves through the Earth which would collapse massive, subterranean, Soviet command bunkers. Truly horrifying.
The first stage of Saturn 5 used kerosene
jaik195701 yes, but to start the turbo pumps and to ignite the kerosine and lox, they used a hypergolic fuels
The Lunar Excursion Module used hypergolic fuel.
Technically, RP1, a highly refined kerosene.
Chuck Addison how does that compare with JP1?
Kerosene and liquid Oxygen
This is pretty badly produced. Cutting to the shuttle main engines (Hydrogen and LOX) when talking about solid rockets is just bad. Leave that out and go straight to the booster shot. The Saturn V's first stage which is shown being fired uses Kerosene not Hydrogen with its LOX. And then there isn't any mention of where hydrazine thrusters are used.
+Admiral Bob Those things bothered me as well; especially considering that the main theme of this video is rocket fuel.
+Admiral Bob
Hydrazine was used on the RCS thrusters on the space shuttle. as well as on the Lunar lander Ascent and Decent motors.
H2+LOX mix was used on the second and third stages of the Saturn V.
only the 1st stage was kerosene+LOX as you have said. but all in all, this vid was interesting as it's the first time I've actually seen Hypergolics "at work".
+Admiral Bob ...ffs, go outside and get some sun. jesus fuckin christ...yes, i understand that you werent incorrect about in your post (and i have OCD so dont give me the 'this shit bothers my ocd' nonsense)...but being as intelligent as you are, you should be well aware of the fact that you're youtube watching videos that were sloppily pieced together for.......wait for it....the purposes of making science more entertaining to those that arent as scientifically literate as others.
log off for a bit, son.....you're spending so much time on line that its making you autistic.
+KandaPanda Making science more accessible is great. Doing that through basically (as edited) misinformation is functionally worse than leaving people ignorant. There is a glut of science-ish stuff out there already. Being correct in your presentation does not necessitate that the material become uninteresting. I can make a reasonable guess as to where the fault lies (ie. a non technical video production team and no post production technical review). The Royal Institution has a reputation to uphold and it was not served by this, as you say, "sloppily pieced together" video. They are beyond the "gold star for participation" stage. It is a perfectly reasonable point to make and while I do not make many comments on UA-cam, failures in educational material catches my eye more than other things might. If you set yourself out there as an authority you should and will be held to a higher standard. Notice that my critique did not at any time descend to name calling or tangential issues. Maybe they'll mail you a cookie for your unsolicited defense, though.
+KandaPanda "making science more entertaining to those that arent as scientifically literate as others" So basically you are advocating teaching people things that might not be correct, just as long as they are taught something??? I picked it up, as did others. Not because we spend all our time on the internet but because (in this case) it was on "You might like" list promoted by UA-cam.
The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet with a HWK 109-509 A-1 rocket motor fueled with a few hundred pounds of T-stoff and C-stoff must have been a real thrill ride! Nice explanation of hyperbolic fuels 👍
These were the exact fuels used on the service and lunar modules.
Why?
They are a liquid at normalish temps, great for space flight
They dont need a sparker
They do not require a turbo pump and can be pressurized with helium for combustion feed
As long as you can open the valves and kinda pressurize the tanks, you have a burn, very important reliability when you sitting on the moons surfaces or stuck in lunar orbit!
They are nasty nasty nasty corrosive, which is fine for space
+CaribSurfKing1 You don't even need a fuel pump is you pressurise the tanks with helium. All you need is a quick squirt from a gas bottle to slow the LEM down so that the fuel is at the bottom of the tank, then open the taps.
Meh, just use ClF3 as your oxidizer, and then EVERY fuel is hypergolic! (As are water, brick, asbestos, and rocket scientists...)
Found the guy with a copy of Ignition! by John D. Clark. :)
+Brian Pack Cliff's notes version. I'd love to read it, but I got my knowledge from googling "things I won't work with." Yeah, ClF3 sounds like Satan's own fire starter...
draco6543 worse. way worse by orders of magnitude. chlorine trifluorude. it can burn things that's already burned. it also releases toxic gas everywhere so it's about as close to hellfire from fantasy worlds you are going to get. scishow did a thing on it, most dangerous chemicals, take a look.
@@bcubed72, if you still haven't read it, check out library.sciencemadness.org
THE CONCRETE IS ON FIRE!
Excellent book. Must read for aspiring rocket scientists.
that "song" was killing me. Stupid dial tone...
Hydrazine is used as attitude thrusters on most spacecraft because of the simplicity of the hypergolic reaction. You just open two valves and that's it, no spark or igniter needed.
Actually it's used as a monopropellant in those cases, so it doesn't use the hypergolic reaction
Never really thought of the Chemistry of space travel. Interesting vid.
that...was...AWESOME...more...my mind needs MORE!!
So nice demonstration..
I was a Titan ii crew commander and the missile was fueled UDMH and NO3. I managed the site during RV yo-yos and refueling operations. Always a hazardous undertaking.
For goodness sake, you should be wearing gloves when working with hydrazine! No exceptions...not even for a video.
No need for those. He just took few drops. He didn't pour, decant, etc.
Tell that to the cancer
Real chemists know what they can get away with.
I work with hydrazine systems on a daily basis and I would not be comfortable doing what he is doing. The stuff just smells like cancer. And that's at the barely detectable PPB level.
Also, his only protection from the N2O4 and NO2 fumes is the fume hood. I would not want to be anywhere near that stuff without protective gear on.
Actually, the engines ( Rocketdyne F1 ) that propelled the Apollo missions to space used LOX and RP-1 ( rocket grade kerosene ) for an ISP of around 260s, as I recall.
The first stage of the Saturn V actually used RP1 (Kerosene) and LOX. It was the second and third stages that used liquid hydrogen and LOX.
And lunar module actually used hypergolic fuel AFAIK to be as failsafe as possible.
Did anybody else notice that from 4:25-4:52 his explanation sounds very provocative? I know I read too much into things but I could not stop laughing at the innuendos and double entendres.
Our host is no rocket scientist.
Hypergolics are not more dangerous. In fact in some ways they are safer. You can't for example, detonate a mixture. They burn as they come together. Which means that when something goes terribly wrong, you can't have even a tiny quantity of unburned fuel mixed with oxidizer like you can with other liquid fuels. It is the mixture of unburned fuel and oxidizer which allows flame fronts to proceed faster than a shockwave. The popping you heard is deflagration, not detonation. Detonation would have broken the test tube. The energy release would be same but detonation is far more destructive.
Hypergolics are also far more reliable in that you don't need an igniter and you can throttle them. He mentioned toward the end that it has potential. He didn't mention what it is. He implied that the fuel has more energy than other fuels. I'm pretty sure that's not true. They use them in space because of their reliability not their energy.
Anybody out there a real rocket scientist, correct me and further correct our host here....
+Walter Clark Sure, in some ways hyperhols are safer. But there must be a reason why Korolev called it the devil's venom, don't you think? Apart from that, if things go wrong with a hypergolic rocket, they tend to go wrong spectacularly. Look up the Nedelin disaster if you don't believe me. You are correct that hypergolic fuels do not have more energy than other fuels: the mixture he tested in the video is about as efficient as kerosine / oxygen; methane / oxygen is more efficient than that, and hydrogen / oxygen is even more efficient, with the disadvantage that hydrogen has very low density (even as a liquid) so you need a huge tank, which is a lot of extra mass.
+ConsciousAtoms, Thanks for your comments. I looked up Nedelin disaster. Did you notice that the explosion wasn't due to the fuel that did all the damage. Actually explosion isn't the right word. The deflagration took takes many seconds, time enough to run toward the fence which trapped the men.
Far more interesting and not mentioned in the Wikipedia article is why the men were so close. Nedelin was an arrogant SOB and to show his belief (as was that of many rocket types of its safety) he put a chair up close to watch the show. His subordinates typical of the way Russians show their loyalty, joined him. That more than the disaster itself is why the government was so angry.
The very rocket design continued testing.
Oh and did you know that Titan II was of similar fuel mixture. What'd we have 500 of them.
Yup the Nedelin disaster was largely caused by Nedelin himself insisting that safety procedure not be followed. And I am aware that Titan also used hypergolics. The reason for that being that the military needed a rocket with storable propellants. Atlas would take too long to launch in case of nuclear war because it would have to be filled with liquid oxygen before launch. Titan could be stored fueled up. These days they use solid rocket motors on ICBMs for the same reason (e.g., minuteman).
But still, given the choice between kerosine and hydrazine I would pick the stuff we use in aircraft over the stuff that dissolves human flesh any day of the week.
+ConsciousAtoms
You might be interested to know another factor why hypergolics were considered safer. (over all) The Gemini spacecraft used the much lighter, cheaper pilot ejection seat instead of the tower. The reason is that they used ye' old war-surplus Titan II. The fireball of a kerosine deflagration was much brighter than a hydrazine deflagration. It's the radiant heat from all directions that incinerates an escaping astronaut.
Nitric acid was an oxidizer & so was flourine but flourine has never been used in any space program! The Russians used nitric acid/kerosene a small extent in their space program!!!!!
Excellent presentation. By way of example, perhaps you could have mentioned the WW11 Me 163 Komet aircraft which I'm pretty sure used a rocket motor involving a similar hypergolic reaction with T-Stoff and C-Stoff. Link to these fuels/oxidizers here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stoffs Regards Mark in the UK
You have an extremely cool job, sir!
"the third consideration is safety" I always say, safety third!
The Gemini mission’s engines used hypergolic fuels. The footage is easy to find.
I love how safety is 3rd on the list of considerations 🤘😁
(Great video but guys we dont need annoying music
+Tangobaldy Sounds like someone trying to connect to AOL.
I enjoyed it all, thank you
Thanks for the lesson
Good video. As an FYI the Saturn V shown in the clip used RP-1 and LOX for the first stage instead of LOX/LH2.
Check out the procedure involved in fuelling the ME163 Komet.
The 2 fuelling crews had to stay very separate, and everything involved had to be flushed with a lot of water to prevent inadvertent mixing.
Despite that, more ME-163 pilots were killed when their plane exploded without warning than by hunting allied fighters that pounced on them during the glide back to base. The combat radius was 25 miles where many modern combat aircraft have a combat radius at least 25 imes greater. That meant these planes could only protect a very small area, and the elaborate safety precautions required further hindered their ability to intercept and destroy Allied bombers with their 30mm cannons.
So glad NASA is investigating the use of less toxic Hypergolic fuels. I hope NASA is successful soon because we are going to be seeing a huge boom in the number of spacecraft that need hypergolic fuels in just a few years.
I was just getting into that!
Correction on what was used during the Apollo program. The Apollo's F1 engine used in the first stage (S-IC) of the Saturn V rocket did NOT use oxygen and hydrogen. Rather, "Like the first stages of most rockets, most of its mass of more than 2,000 tonnes at launch was propellant, in this case RP-1 rocket fuel and liquid oxygen (LOX) oxidizer." "RP-1 (alternately, Rocket Propellant-1 or Refined Petroleum-1) is a highly refined form of kerosene outwardly similar to jet fuel, used as rocket fuel."
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-IC
great explanation thank u
While Apollo used cryogenic fuels, the Gemini program used hypergolics as fuel in its Titan 2 launch vehicle. You can see the difference when you watch film or video of a Gemini launch vs. an Apollo launch. Gemini you see the original ignition with that orange-brown fire, but pretty much after it clears the launch tower the flame is almost invisible while the Apollo-Saturn trails that huge flame. I believe hypergolics were also used in the LEM's ascent engine because they needed something that was 100% reliable and which required a simpler engine configuration, without pipes, pumps, cryogenics, etc. As you see here, when the two different gasses mix, you always get a reaction, and that's what they were coiunting on to get the LEM off the moon.
Brilliant explanation and narration.. Thanks
Irritating music though
There are so many inaccuracies in this video it’s impressive
2:03 "and that was the solution used in the Nineteen Seventies when I was a kid to fire the Apollo Astronauts off towards the moon" - and also when I was a kid in the late Sixties with Apollo 8, 10, 11, and 12 !
He does not mention that the real danger is these chemicals are super toxic.
I really hope he had a mask for handling that hydrazine. I'd suggest gloves too but... Red Fuming Nitric Acid has a bad habit of causing most safety gloves to spontaneously ignite...
Great video
From all the comments talking about how annoying the background music is, I wonder how many folks don't even recognize that sound. If you think the music is annoying, imagine listening to it for minutes a day re-connecting to the Internet... how I love my broadband!!
@ 2:43 or so "this is the kind of chemistry that actually makes me very nervous' ........ :-D
great information but drop the psychiatric background muzac
this music was like a fruit on a big cake to this video, must say I enjoy it
Thank you very much.
Hypergolics are notoriously toxic and dangerous but thankfully they arent used in many launch vehicles today, they're more used on spacecrafts that really need to light up quick like the superdracos on the dragon capsule and mars lander vehicles. Fortunately, monopropellant like hydrazine is very effective as well while being safer.
I accidentally produced a load of NO2 doing my final year project at university. I was digesting sponges with concentrated Nitric acid to get the spicules out, but hadn't washed some of the samples enough, which had been stored in Ethanol. Luckily I was using all the correct safety equipment but damn it was scary.
I worked around the B-2 Bomber and we were all taught Hydro-zine Awareness. The class took about three minutes of our time. "By the time you hear the alarm, you are dead."
Class dismissed.
When's this frikin dail-up finally gonna connect?!
Edit : It's been 7 months now!
Great video!
The match burns because....the wood is dipped in phoferus... the phoferus has its own oxidizer made in it... The stick is just to hold the phoferus it's not the fuel eather
This is where we could get around the world very quickly.
Aerozine 50 is a mix of hydrazine and UDMH or unsymmetrical Dimethyl hydrazine, not just dimethyl hydrazine and do my knowledge was only used in upper stages such as the Apollo command module.
Edit: I’m dumb it was used on Titan ICBM’s
Love the audio track on this.
I realize this guy is Italian but the way he pronounces "fast" and "gaseous" is very interesting to me because he has an otherwise fairly standard American accent.
Brilliant explanation! Thank you :-)
Impossible to watch with that annoying phone busy signal and low speed modem in the background. What were they thinking?
Saturn V first stage was RP1 and lox. The Shuttle's main engines used liquid hydrogen and lox. The Gemini missions used hypergolic fuels.
Space shuttle main engines are not hypergolic... by definition hypergolic means ignition without an external ignition source (i.e. a Spark). However, the space shuttle main engine, are actually ignited by a spark igniter. They are located in the augmented spark igniter chamber, and they actually ignite the fuel.
Always good to see Andrea Sella... even if I am quite surprised that he's not distilling urine.
You missed out Russia's old favourite Kerosene and LOX
Science is so interesting
Really important talk. It is hard to interpret his articulation at 4:31+ "no activation barriers" sounds like "no activation values"; What you are saying is hugely important, "TALK RIGHT!!!"
Who wrote the rule that excellent video must be made trash video by the inclusion of an annoying soundtrack?
Could you do this same explosion effect in a vacuum chamber? If the answer is yes! Demonstrate how this explosion with AEROZINE 50 can occur without oxygen? Thank you.
The N2O4 supplies all the oxygen necessary for this very energetic reaction to take place.
What a cool guy
Nice video 👍
F that music noise. Had to bail. Fax sounds are bad.
TRI your modem isn't suppose to make that noise, it's also not suppose to be heard in the middle of a damn video.
Perhaps the greatest respect is due to the astronauts who have ridden atop such hypergolic liquid propellant rockets. The Gemini astronauts rode atop modified Titan II ICBMs, which were powered by the hydrazine/dinitrogen tetroxide (often just called nitrogen tetroxide) propellant combination. The Chinese taikonauts' Long March launch vehicles also burn this mixture, but:
Oddly, hypergolic propellant combinations are, in one way, much safer than the kerosene/LOX (liquid oxygen) and/or LH2 (liquid hydrogen)/LOX combinations that the Vostok, Mercury-Atlas, Voskhod, Soyuz, Apollo-Saturn, and Space Shuttle (its main engines) used (and the LOX/ethanol-water combination that the Mercury-Redstone used). All of these non-hypergolic propellant combinations can intimately mix to form highly explosive mixtures, which can--and usually do--detonate (just look at ballistic missile and rocket launch failure videos here on UA-cam). Also:
Hypergolic mixtures, because they ignite on contact, can't mix to form explosive mixtures; they can burn, but not explode if the tanks rupture (look up Titan II launch failure videos [the Titan I, its predecessor, used kerosene/LOX--failing ones detonated!] and you'll see--the ruptured Titan II missiles created a brief burst of flame and reddish-brown smoke rather than a rapidly expanding fireball). Chemically, though, hypergolic propellants are highly toxic--the hydrazine/nitrogen tetroxide one is also carcinogenic and mutagenic (causing genetic mutations), is poisonous to breathe, and causes serious burns. (The nitric acid (red or white)/hydrazine mixture has also been used, and is almost as nasty.) But:
Still, they are useful for spacecraft attitude control and propulsion systems because they are storable at room temperature for years onboard (and MMH--mono-methyl hydrazine--is also used as a monopropellant aboard spacecraft), and because the quantities carried aboard satellites and space probes are small (much, much, less than what launch vehicles require), their advantages make them worth the trouble, although cleaner, safer alternative spacecraft propellants are being developed.
Corection: the space shuttle used hydrogen and oxygen and SRBs. The Saturn V used RP1 (modified kerosene) and oxygen.
Professor Andrea Sella was the kind of kid that love to explode stuff lol
You could have shown footage of the Proton rocket which uses hypergolic fuel instead of the Soyuz launcher or Space shuttle.
The Protron Soviet rocket came out in 1965 & was a very powerful rocket launcher & used hydrazine/nitrogen tetroxide as fuel/oxidizer & over 3 million pounds of thrust, simular to the USA Delta rocket that used LOX/kerosene with solid fueled strap on boosters producing 2.4 million pounds of thrust! This rocket came out I think 1964!
Where did you get dimethylhydrazine
What's with the telephone and modem sounds?
Otherwise, the video is great.
The Saturn 5 was not powered by liquid hydrogen and oxygen it was kerosene and liquid O2, the space shuttle was powered by both liquid H2 and O2 though
The S-IC stage of the Saturn V was kerosene, but the S-II and S-IVB stages both used hydrogen.
Titan 2 booster used in Gemini used hypergolics. Watch a Gemini launch, the brown cloud at ignition and the clean burn on liftoff.
He makes it sound like if you take a test tube of the one and put a drop of the other into it , the whole room will instantly explode
Awesome info, horribly painful and disturbing soundtrack.
The NAZI Messerschmitt Me 163B Komet use this for the first time.
MUSTANG115hp i always thought it was hydrogen peroxide too
Not quite--the Me 163 Komet rocket plane burned a hydrazine hydrate/hydrogen peroxide mixture, but it had its own ways of making the aircraft, pilots, and even ground crewmen vanish spectacularly if something went wrong...
seems to me the big trick for safety is to find a SLOW burning enough mixture? That way if there's a mishap and the vehicle comes apart - the chance of a (more) catastrophic reaction is minimized?
I can't wait to get back to university studies ;p
The Chinese have been doing this for many years with their Long March rockets because despite the high toxicity of the fuel, it is actually safer because there is far less risk of explosion with hypergolic fuels. They are planning, however, to go to kerosene/LOX fueled rockets in the future because of concerns of accidental release of the extremely toxic UDMH fuel.
Small correction: SRBs are lit from the top.
The first stage of the Saturn V was RP1 and liquid oxygen. The 2nd and third stages were all cryogenic fuel and oxidizer. You should edit the video, as it seems you're saying the first stage was all cryogenic!
Had to look it up because I knew he said hat, but I didn't know it was a compliment as in, "I take my hat off to you".
worked on the Titan II ICBM from 79-83.......the propellants were by far the scariest part of the system.....
Great video, great guy. Awful music, would be so much better without it.
The background modem like 'noise' was also quite annoying.