Why Many Household Chemicals Are Also Rocket Fuels
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.พ. 2022
- It turns out that many rocket fuels are basic chemicals that are used in everyday life, which means you can find them in regular stores. But you shouldn't be under any illusion that these would work or be a good idea for a rocket.
A better way to build rockets is to buy pre-made solid rocket motors, and then get certified by experts for bigger and bigger rocket motors www.nar.org/
Explosions and Fire going all the way concentrating peroxide.
• Hydrogen Peroxide: goi...
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"Yesterday, while avoiding the rest of the news," now there's a big mood.
I am curious, what does "big mood" mean? I have never heard that phrase used before.
f
@@dr4d1s I would say a synonym would be "relatable"
@@jacewhite8540 Cool, thank you, I appreciate it.
I wonder how yesterday’s news will affect Western / Russian cooperation on the ISS.
I’m a student at BYU in Provo and a part of the Rocketry Club. We got word about the rocket fuel incident on Sunday, and the incident occurred within the Heritage Hall dorms. Luckily, everyone was interviewed and there was no connection to our club. Some random person just got a little too experimental with their sugar rocket.
Yes, but did you find you why there’s a toilet in the living room?
@@scottmanley asking the real questions here.
@@scottmanley mobile phone gaming chair. Or just too lazy to pause the TV to go.
@@scottmanley probably to aid in creating their at home rocketry workshop. Maybe for decoration. I’ve only heard about what happened through the club. I didn’t experience anything firsthand, and I was in the dorms on the other side of campus at the time. But just to be safe, I’m gonna say both.
@@scottmanley You don' t have a toilet in your living room? I couldn't live without it.
Fun fact: My university refused to give the rocketry club (Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineers or DARE, you know them!) space in the chemistry faculty to make rocket fuel, citing it was "too dangerous".
When someone then told them they would then go back to doing it in their dorms the university changed their mind and facilitated them! This is years ago. DARE has their own spot now, but I definitely recognise the situation...
I`m in 11th grade and consider studying aerospace engineering at delft. is it good?
@@julianholstein3840 I've studied microelectronics in Delft, not aerospace, so I can't claim anything about the particular study. I work in the space industry now at ISISPACE, which is a spin-off of TU Delft and quite some colleagues came from AE. What I hear from aerospace engineers in Delft is that they have no trouble finding a job anywhere. The diploma is very well recognised and I really enjoyed the University.
Dorm rocket fuel is the equivalent of moonshine, some people do it for the thrills
I have a mate who's a professor in a chemistry department. One day teaching a lab he had designed, he found out the... let's say panicky way that if the students read the protocol wrong (as they often do) the ended up making TNT.
@@DrWhom TNT is relatively safe (explosion wise) as long as you don't detonate it using a blast cap. It's a high explosive, meaning it's hard to get it to actually detonate.
It burns very well if lit with a match, so it's a fire hazard.
It's also carcinogenig. Don't let it get inside of you.
A toilet seat has everything a starting rocket engineer needs. It has a seat, fuel tank, combustion chamber and exhaust nozzle. Slight modifications and off you go, lol.
And, as a bonus, you also have an appropriate place to shit bricks the first time you experience the g forces of an actual successful rocket! :P
@@andersjjensen With some tinkering, that could be utilized as solid fuel into the burn. 😊
Fuel is taco bell.
Hot suace is oxidizer
It'd be great to be an engineer on that propane-fuelled rocket concept. When people ask what you do you could reply "I work with propane and propane accessories."
LoL
You are the King of the Hill with that comment….
I tell you hwat
As opposed to the brave pure alcohol rocketeers, "I'm utterly shitfaced and I wrrkwthh prrpaaane nd prrpnaccsoreessss"
Ah yes, the Texas space program out of Arlen.
@@SuLokify bwaaaah!
I go here! I’m in the rocketry club. I replied to your tweet as well but you may not have seen it.
A friend of mine who works in BYU’s chemical waste management, which is now in possession of the toilet. The plan was to blow it up in the quad outside the dorm building using 2 pounds of R-Candy. The student successfully made one batch of R-Candy, which had already been deposited in the toilet. (Seen in police photos) The second batch caught fire. So now, waste management is trying to figure out what to do with the fuel. The rocketry club also put out a strongly worded letter discouraging people from doing anything like this in the future.
I think the solution is to do as the students planned. Contact your local law enforcement and ask to borrow their range and bomb squad and have fun vaporizing a toilet.
There's a youtube channel called "Tech Ingredients" that shows a far safer way of creating sugar rocket blends by replacing sucrose with sorbitol, which reacts just as good as table sugar, but melts at a far lower temperature and thus can reduce the risk of unintentional combustion or just injury from it burning you by a lot. He then goes into showing how you can create far more powerful hobby rocket motors with composites similar to space shuttle boosters, also with products that are readily obtainable online or from stores. He's extremely professional and extremely thorough in how he teaches and demonstrates so I highly recommend him. Like the science teacher you wish you had.
I love that channel but I keep wondering when they're going to get shut down, between that and the "beverage" projects.
Yep, a great channel.
I wonder how's he keeping the on-the-edge stuff up, considering how many knuckleheads are amoung us )
epic channel, truly well explained and researched... definitely has the best DIY rockets video on the whole youtube
Sorbitol doesn't generate as high an ISP as sugar, it burns at a lower temperature and pressure. But sorbitol absolutely is safer and easier than using sugar, I don't mind the decrease in power because it's so much easier to make and load into rocket grains. And yeah, Tech Ingredients is the best...
@@TheExplosiveGuy add aluminum or iron oxide or some other powdered metal and it could increase the performance while keeping the beneficial properties of sorbital
My dad was once responsible of chemicals supply in his institute. Including the alcohol.
He noticed that closer to the end of the day some workers were a bit happier then usual.
He decided to make regular checks of the huge metal alcohol container with locked tap at the bottom. Including the lock, and the level and concentration of alcohol. All these were fine but the morning alcohol breath from some workers continued.
Until one day he had to refill the container but it began overflowing after about only half the container volume. So he opened the lock on the top and looked inside - It was half full with condoms, fulled with water.
Someone had picked the upper lock but was aware about the rutine checks ))
At the other end, when working in an avionics workshop, we had 5L containers of lab standard 100% absolute ethanol we used for cleaning circuit boards. In ~20 years, I don't know of _anyone_ who took any, certainly no one did while at work.
Alcohol rapidly degrades polyurethane condoms and at 95% concentration, even PET water bottles. I love that you can buy cheap ever clear in Louisiana walmart. My local Texas liquor stores have 3 different brands of 190 proof happy juice. Good for chemistry, after parties and disinfection.
@@NemoConsequentae It was in a regular Moscow organic chemistry institule. The key word is Moscow.
@@denispol79 That certainly adds context!
@@NemoConsequentae When I was in the Navy, a buddy of mine had a jar of maraschino cherries. He'd emptied the juice and filled the jar with 100% alcohol. He got the alcohol from his buddy, a Navy Hospital Corpsman.
At Rotary Rocket, I had to clean up the godawful sludgy mess of kerosene combustion products condensed on the LOX-cooled chamber, using isopropyl alcohol as the solvent. Later at XCOR, I suggested that we use IPA for fuel instead of kerosene, and there was much rejoicing. 99% IPA atomizes much more effectively and burns much better than any diluted alcohol, and if the person designing the engine knows what he's doing, it provides excellent cooling, no water needed. Needing more LOX improves the propellant density, a feature not a bug.
When we finally moved on to a kerosene-based fuel, we used a desulfurized, de-aromatized, triple-distilled solvent grade that was MUCH cleaner burning and didn't have the evil stench of Jet-A. It was also immune to coolant passage coking.
Who knew, IPA is good not just for drinkin but rocketry as well
@@SylviaRustyFae drinking IPA just gives you a bad stomach
@@dsdy1205 i mean, its usually gotten ne drunk from my experience. Are you sure its not an expired IPA you drank that did that?
@@SylviaRustyFae I mean, isopropyl alcohol isn't bio-active, as far as I'm aware, which is the exact reason it's used in medical stuff. Unless you meant something else
@@dsdy1205 The joke is that IPA is also used for India Pale Ale.
Some friends and i made an abnormally large sugar rocket as a high-school physics project. The stuff isn't particularly unstable honestly. Of course, we did this outside for safety, and also instead of melting the sugar and potassium nitrate together, as seems to be somewhat standard, we dissolved both in water and then boiled the water off. Reason for that being, the friend that did the research read that the caramelization of the sugar would reduce the specific impulse, so we decided to use the method that was least likely to caramelize the sugar while still getting a reliably good mix of the two chemicals. Of course, when it came to actually casting our motor we got a huge air bubble in it, and reviewing our launch footage determined that the rocket jettisoned around half it's fuel load and nozzle about 1/10th of a second after ignition (by which point it was around 5 feet off the ground). Fun times though.
It depends on how you would like to mix it. People like to melt the sugar for better mixing performance so it is very dangerous, burning ofc, not explosive, otherwise I won't be able to write this comment. However, sugar fuel is still much safer than most other types of fuel.
@@majianjia yeah fair. I'm guessing the autoignition temperature is still a fair bit higher than the melting point of sugar, so if you're careful/able to keep track of the temp while you do it, it shouldn't be too hard to prevent an accident, but accurately tracking the temp would be a challenge without something like an IR temp gun. Mind you, those only cost like $60 and can be had from plenty of hardware stores, sooo...
Also found that at least in scales of like, a campfire, it's almost impossible to actually light something else on fire with it. Or at least, how we mixed it, i'm guessing our exhaust was slightly fuel rich, so anything you'd try to light wouldn't have oxygen until the smoke cleared away, and thus i only ever managed a little smoldering. Definitely would still do a number on your hand if a whole pan lit up while you're stirring, and would cause damage to anything flammable caught in the flame, but it seems surprisingly low risk of starting a house fire or the like.
@@reaganharder1480 "Careful" and "The kind of lazy person who wants instant gratification by replicating something they saw on tv/TH-cam" rarely overlap...
You can also use sorbitol instead of regular sugar. It has a lower melting point and doesn't caramelize, when molten, but it has a slightly worse specific impulse I think.
@@mathewcherrystone9479 i do seem to recall that coming up in our research actually. For a highschool project, we researched this pretty thoroughly. The guy even found an equation for calculating roughly where the aerodynamic center of pressure would be (useful to know for stability reasons), and used it to determine that fins were almost completely unnecessary with our design. We still put fins on though, because it looked cooler.
As a NAR member with HPR certification, thank you for pointing people to the right place to learn how to so safe rocketry
Agreed. What level are you? Got my L3 last year with Tripoli.
@@Banditomojado How are things in Tripoli these days? I've been out of it for decades. My Tripoli number was something like 372 I think. Got my Class B from them when I was 12.
As a budding young pyro, I experimented with my own black powder rocket motors. I was making real progress, in a SpaceX-ey sort of way, until my dad discovered that I had cut up most of his shotgun shells.
Much to his credit - after he cooled down - he gave me an allowance that let me buy Estes motors instead.
I also acquired a bit of esoteric knowledge, which I share here: the primers in shotgun shells are really, really LOUD.
The powder in shotgun shells is not black powder, but rather much more dangerous smokeless powder. The type of powder in shotgun shells is pretty harmless when burned in the open, but under pressure the burn rate increases dramatically, which in turn increases the pressure and then the burn rate in a vicious cycle that only ends when the supply of powder runs out or the whole thing explodes. If you did repeated experiments you would likely get several unsatisfying "phut" noises until you passed the critical limit and got a "boom" that would throw a bunch of shrapnel around. You are probably quite lucky your dad caught you before you managed to seriously hurt yourself.
@@faroncobb6040 Are you talking about nitrocellulose?
@@jannikheidemann3805 Yes, nitrocellulose powder is not a good choice for rocket fuel.
I’m someone who has been making rocket candy for several years and it is sad to see the hobby get so much negative press due to the inexperience/incompetence of someone. It can indeed be dangerous, and should only be attempted in the presence of someone more experienced and following local laws. But at the same time, it’s so much more rewarding than launching a motor you just bought online.
Youd be surprised how many young kids(14-15) think that its a good idea to build a homemade space shot on their own, without any kind of supervision or mentor.
When I was young, we always made the mixture in the microwave. Produces the exact same mix, but doesn’t get nearly hot enough to ignite
You can replace sucrose with sorbitol, much safer when cooking, but harder to source in bulk for reasonable price.
I can relate having tried to make a few myself many years ago. However the rocket engines ARA builds are hardly something you would buy in a store. You need to look into it.
@@jmstudios457 if they survive to adulthood they might even become rocket scientists
Great presentation, Scott! Funny story:
Years ago when I was an undergrad engineering major, I was taking a General Chemistry class. I was doing pretty well in the class and I asked my professor if I could do an extra, no credit lab, just for fun. He was intrigued and I outlined my plan to him. Then he got really intrigued. I told him I wanted to make some hydrazine...using the US Air Force recipe essentially using bleach, ammonia, and a used mop head (that's right, a USED mop head) for catalyst. I ended up making about a half pound of the stuff in aqueous solution which I was able to confirm by titatration was something like 15% or so aqueous hydrazine. I neutralized it with sulfuric acid to make hydrazine sulfate crystals which was a much safer non volatile form. Fun lab and I remember it well. Making rocket fuel in a lab can be fun...if done safely and with utmost respect for the chemicals.
Scary stuff. What does the used mop head contribute?
Having a chemistry professor review and approve of the experimental procedures is not optional. Unfortunately, it just reduces the risks, but doesn't eliminate them.
@@hamjudo it’s difficult to reduce risks in academic chemistry, it’s probably one of the most dangerous things you’ll do there.
@@WineScrounger Surface area from the dirt maybe?
Holy crap, that prof did not know what he was approving. If the cops, fire department, or local hazmat type people found out what you were doing, you would've been in major shit. In the last couple of years in the F-16 community, 16 maintenance crew were hospitalized for exposure to hydrazine in 3 different incidents.
Thoroughly enjoyed learning how far Model Rocketry has progressed since my high school friend introduced me to Estes Rockets in 1966. The rocket kits and engines were dirt cheap, which was perfect for a kid who got $2 for mowing the grass once a week. I always had plenty of left over engines as the first launch was usually the last due to the abundance of trees here in the Southeast. Great memory.
Oh man kids have it so good these days: my kid got the new modern version of the "Astro cam" camera carrying rocket kit. No 110 film here: it's a rechargeable digital camera, think it even takes video now too 😁
Where I grew up it was against the law for kids to buy rocket motors at the hobby shop without some kind of license or something. So as a result I never got to do model rocketry, even though I desperately wanted to, looking at all the cool kits. I guess some asshole somewhere was happy they "kept me safe" or something though.
That brings back memories of the same time, but in rural Idaho. There weren't many trees, but my rockets would seek them out the way my golf balls would seek bodies of water. Then there was that one time I tried to simultaneously ignite all three engines in a large rocket, but only two lit, so the rocket did this tight rainbow trajectory over the neighbor's house into a vacant lot. When I arrived on scene to retrieve the rocket a very short time later, some old man was beating the flaming weeds and rocket - the other motor having lit from the wrong end after the short flight - with a shovel. I don't think he ever figured out what the heck it was. Back to the drawing board it was...
I ended up going to BYU and earned a degree in Electrical Engineering. The most dangerous thing we ever did there - intentionally, that is - was the invention of noise-emitting diodes, which was kind of a big deal back in the 70s.
Loving the anecdotes from early hobby rocketry, and I'll add to the tales:
My hobby started around 1968-9 when someone in my neighborhood crew got one, and then we all had to get and build some. We were lucky to have ample open spaces (Upstate NY) and for a while it was quite a "keep-up-with-the Jones" situation as everyone tried to beat/impress the others with another more powerful, more stages, more parachutes, etc. We even cajoled our favorite 5th grade science teacher to start a rocketry club. That required some cajoling of the PTA and school principle, but finally, after agreeing everyone needed to wear lab safety glasses, we got it.
Also a couple experiences with wayward rockets; one a stock build of the Estes Big Bertha with three motors and the other an engine tube with tinfoil stuffed in the upper end and a straw glued on for the guide rod. Big Bertha also experienced a one engine failure and launched into a rainbow trajectory ending in the front yard of a nearby church. The motor tube prototype immediately went into wild cartwheels and never got more that 30' in the air.
@Drake
I hear you. $2 to mow a lawn. A few of those a week bought plenty of KNO3 from Rexall drug store in 64,5 and 6. (7th/8th grade)
I filled one of the empty KNO3 containers with kitchen match heads and gunpowder. Put the lid on and taped it shut. Forgetting to put a fuse in it, I grabbed an ice pick from the kitchen and poked a hole in the side for a fuse. 2-3 seconds after the tip of the ice pick went in, the thing blew up in my hand and scattered lit match heads all over my bedroom. I quickly opened the window and put an exhaust fan in it. There was so much smoke billowing out that the neighbor across the street called the fire department. Mom and dad weren’t home at the time. Later on, after they found out about my transgression from the neighbors, fire dept. and police, I caught the wrath of dads’ strap. ~10 years later, received a degree in chemistry. It was just meant to be.
Now, pushing 70, I wonder…..why do I continue to walk the face of this rock?
Apologies for the rant, Drake. You take care!👍
Another place to go for Rocketry Experience is Tripoli Rocketry Association. As a member of both NAR and a lifetime member of Tripoli, we have similar Rocket Flight experiences as well as certifications up to 40K Ns thrust class Rockets, mostly with Commercially produced motors, Tripoli does additionally promote and provide guidance for mixing and manufacturing your own Rocket motors safely. We primarily focus on Composite Propellants but we also work with both Sucrose motors and Nitrous Oxide Hybrid motors. A lot of our members are PHD Chemists and Physicists among other disciplines and are also in either academia or associated with commercial Rocket manufacturers and our goal is always safety for ourselves and the public.
Came here to say this as well. I'm a member of both NAR & Tripoli, and sit on the BOD of our local club (affiliated w/ both national orgs) here in central NY. We have a large group of our local members that dabble in "EX" motors. This includes both sugar and composite, and the occasional hybrid motor. If you reach a Level-2 certification, Tripoli is quite supportive of this endeavor. It adds a level of challenge that some folks love. NAR does not support these activities though.
My grandpa drunk a few bottles of industrial 95% alcohol for fire starting/cleaning... The one with pink or blue color... Over a period of a few months.
My dad was not very happy when he noticed the alcohol was clear when he needed it... I.e. my grandpa replaced it with water... That rascal
Great that Explosions & Fire got mentioned, indeed a very entertaining channel :D
Cool video!
Always find it interesting when one TH-camr I watch mentions another, in a mostly different topic. Explosions&Fire is one of the most entertaining channels on the youtubes. Just be careful using yellow things...
Rocket candy is amazing sfuff. I've got a video of testing out a PVC cased engine with it I made in my back yard. 2kg+ of thrust, 5 seconds, the case cracked and whole thing detonated. It has an isp of about 90. Still yet, it's not much hard to make apcp which has an isp of 200+. Being next to my engine detonating was amazing, can't imagine being around a larger amount, or higher isp.
PVC creates shrapnel when bursting. Make sure you wear proper armor. 🛡
Stop suggesting APCP and move to ANCP. APCP is only available in the United States. Everywhere else it requires an exorbitant amount of money and licensing to even procure AP and HTPB - not to mention it needs to go through several customs and thousands of miles of dangerous transport - its burning byproducts are also highly toxic. The difference in specific impulse is 10% between the two. For most of humanity outside your US bubble it doesn't even make sense.
I spent plenty of time as an amateur pyrotechnician, and helped shoot fireworks shows in 7 states. And many of my peers would make their own compounds. Some of the most popular oxidizers are simple food preservatives! They have lots of oxygen for the pyro compound, and also lots of oxygen for the little bacteria to implode upon. It's a win-win!
Are you a flat earther?
Governments go and make a plague and youtube helps cover that fact up. One student starts a minor fire making fuel, youtube bans this content. F the globalist , corporate hegemony.
4:35 - bottom of the screen, the sentence that is cut off: "Hydrazine...sometimes exploded when used for regenerative cooling" xD Love the fact they tried that.
John D. Clark is a comedic scientific genius ngl, and it's amazing. When talking about Flourine, he wrote:
"It [Fluorine] is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water..."
And the oh so wise advice of
"[If certain events occur] the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes."
Also
"Joe? You know that stuff you sent me to test for thermal stability? Well, first, it hasn't got any. Second, you owe me a new bomb, a new Wianco pickup, a new stirrer, and maybe a few more things I'll think of later. And third (crescendo and fortissimo) you'll have a couple of flunkies up here within fifteen minutes to clean up this (-bleep-) mess or I'll be down there with a rusty hacksaw blade..." I specified the anatomical use to which the saw blade would be put. End of conversation."
@@richardmillhousenixon IIRC, it was either chlorine trifluoride (ClF3) or dioxygen difluoride (O2F2, otherwise known as FOOF).
@@DABrock-author I think it was FOOF, all I remember is it was _a_ flourine compound (Edit: it's CIF3)
@@richardmillhousenixon I think he said it about ClF3
Awesome video! About the methane, it can actually be acquired in liquid form with relative ease in some countries. Some cars, trucks and many buses in Europe (mostly eastern Europe) use it as an alternative fuel. It tends to be kept at around 250 bars in the fuel tanks, which turns most of it into liquid.
And then there are some dickheads (I think that word is suitable here) that makes adapters from methane filling stations to their propane fueled cars. The result is usually quite spectacular for those a safe distance away.
Today you can also get trucks that runs on LNG. Normally it's an Otto motor that's fed the methane instead of gasoline, but there's also a Diesel engine conversion that is more efficient. Just a small amount of diesel to create a flame to ignite the methane.
@@ehsnils the word dickheads is quite suitable, but it is a plural form so your verb should also be plural
Just wanted to say how much I appreciate these videos. I've been watching since I was a child looking for KSP tutorials and you brought me from unable to orbit to free returns to complex interplanetary missions- understandable to a schoolkid! I'm now 18, going into my second year of university tomorrow, and have been watching this whole time. You've kept my interest in science alive. Thanks Scott!
This is the kind of video that can get you put on a list lol
There are whole channels like this
The real challenge of making rocket fuel is keeping it from exploding before you want it to. Something like KNSU (potassium nitrate/sucrose aka rocket candy) is actually quite safe if you're patient and willing to take certain precautions (like cooking it outdoors). In fact, it's a pain in the ass to get it to light compared to the more usual black powder motors. If those kids really were making rocket candy, they must've ignored some of the basic precautions (don't try to melt it in the microwave, for example).
Oh God...microwave oven (make sparks) and woosh instant combustion!
Point of order: outdoors but not in fire weather
Now I really want to try making a microwave ignition system.
KNSU isn't really recommended anymore due to a number of issues including caramelization and grains that can be somewhat brittle. Most recommend using Sorbitol instead. Better processing and overall greater reliability, though it still very much requires knowing what you are doing in order to be safe.
Nah they had the heat too high. I made r candy using erythritol instead of glucose in 7th grade for the compulsory science fair. I was so terrified, I took every precaution possible. I did it outside, on a hot plate, with an oil double boiler, a fan for extra ventilation, made the concrete and grass wet /just in case/. Nothing happened, my project got like 15% higher deltav over glucose, I got 75% on that assignment.
Great Content, as always! While I watch most of your videos to discover and learn new things, I think I can actually answer your big question here with a pretty high level of confidence.
The toilet is most likely in the living room to allow for the water from the apartment to be squeegeed into the hole in the floor under the toilet. When there is no floor drain available to be used for that purpose, many fire departments and building maintenance crews will pull the WC to create a reasonably quick and relatively cheap drain hole at floor level. Each apartment will have a toilet, so multiple drains are possible when water damage is widespread through a building. This prevents the need to push or chute (move over tarps) the water long distances through other apartments, hallways, and/or stairways, or for vacuuming the water into containers to be carried out of the affected area. Pulling the toilets can save lots of time and physical labor, and can be re-installed for just a few dollars apiece.
Fly SAFE!
Hey Scott! I’m on the MIT Rocket Team and it’s actually quite simple to get the ingredients for an aluminum & ammonium perchlorate propellant. We fly all our rockets on custom propellant formulations and are working to be the first college team to send a two stage rocket past the karman line!
If you're a team or a member of TAR/Tripoli with an HPR it is... otherwise rather difficult.
@@wetmelon7409yes it is actually incredibly difficult, next to impossible for everyone else on the planet except American rocket club members.
The toilet wasn't in the living room, the walls between the toilet and the living room were blown away.
You got me worried now. In my little world, I seem to have quite by accident, ended up owning substantial quantities of many of the items you listed. None were purchased for rocketry or otherwise explosive reactions however.
One can use the fine aluminium powder to help reveal fingerprints BTW.
As a retired Chemical Technologist, I found your Video very educational!!!
These are my favorite kind of videos!! In pharmacy school we were learning about the hydrazine moiety. My professor says, "only one person in my 15 years of teaching knew this, but does anyone know where else your find hydrazine?" Thanks to Scott, My hand shot up "ROCKET FUEL" LOL. The one person that knew it before he said was a chem PhD before going to pharmacy school. He asked if I was a chem PhD, "No sir, I just like rockets."
Last time I was in the supermarket, there was some bottled water - a popular mid-performance fuel in smallsats these days! Comet, Steamjet and Hydros all make use of inert water to push spacecraft around. Also: if the O2 of the air counts, how about the N2 of the air? Cold gas thrusters are thrusters too ;p
Back in my hobby rocketry days we made several we called "Carnivorously fueled". The rocket motors literally burned meat for fuel. Because we read that it was possible, and wanted to see for ourselves. I assure you it works. I doubt t will ever be a useful solution, it was just "let's see if we can".
must be some delicious smelling launches
Fat is very energy dense. Did you try tallow rocket motors?
Well, now I know what to do with the bodies!
From a chemist's view, this was one of the most interesting videos about rockets I've seen so far ^^
Hear, hear, retired chemist here.
One friend of a family member was assigned to a nuclear submarine during his mandatory military service in USSR.
Apparently they had some training torpedoes at one point which were filled with ethanol to give them the correct buoyancy, or something along these lines. It didn't take long to figure out why those torpedoes immediately rose to the surface upon firing. But curiously, you have to consider that they were something on the order of half meter wide tubes, many meters long, and they were emptied during a single voyage, before firing, by a crew of only a hundred-ish. I leave the math as an exercise to the reader.
In torpedoes the alcohol is the fuel to make a steam to run the turbine to spin the propeller
Russians. 'Nuff said. (And yes, I have a Russian colleage who once startled our CFO by bringing a Vodka bottle to an important meeting... ;-)
I love when you talk about propellants, oxidisers and other energetics. Great video, Scott.
I've absolutely designed propellent mixtures and cooked up fuel, although I did it through my school as a research project, so I got access to a lab and a fume hood. Definitely not something to do at home in the kitchen if you don't actually know the risks and have some kind of procedure lol
Edit: Kind of tangentially-related thing: It is pretty crazy that liquid Hydrogen is the most out of reach of the common propellents.
For a cryogen, I would think it has much to do with there not being much use for LH2 outside of rocketry. LOX has medical uses. LNG is used for heating and powering garbage trucks.
that dude definitely had a procedure, just didn't result in a successful batch of rocket fuel...
@@DerekHonkawa True. I was more considering the insanely low temperatures required for LH2, whereas LOX is relatively easy to condense with how easy it is to get LN2. You can blow air through a coil of pipe sitting in LN2 so it condenses to liquid and then just let the liquid air mixture sit in a cup until all of the LN2 from the air has boiled off.
Funny how the light goes on starting at 1:58 when he gesticulates. At 2:00 you can see the shine on his head. Hallelujah! 🤣🤣🤣
The shoutout to explosions&fire is top tier, love it
Just brilliant! Thank you SM - another fascinating insight into the world of rocket science.
As to the lavatory - I reckon it’s the modern equivalent of the old traffic cone gag, only taken to an extreme. Imagine the scene… one chap rocks up with a traffic cone, followed by his buddy with an, ahem, ‘acquired’ loo. “I’ll see your traffic cone and raise you…”
If I had a flatmate making rocket fuel in the kitchen, I'D want a toilet in the living room.
@@MirlitronOne I think I'd move it to the patio...
In many ways, it's too bad the world has changed so much in respect to activities such as this. As a youth (now close to 50 years ago), a couple of friends and I regularly made sugar rockets based out of a book we found in the school library.
It was a great learning experience, and we did learn some lessons along the way. Fortunately, our junior high science teacher figured out what we were up to and provided some much needed guidance and a few chemistry lessons along the way. Also, very fortunately, none of us were so idiotic as to try to make it in our kitchen. The reality is kids youth can be extremely inquisitive about these activities, and the reality is the needed chemicals are everywhere, and in so many common household products, in addition, the needed chemistry is not at all complex.
Rather than trying to banning these activities outright as a society, we need to learn ways to give youth with these interests "the ability to do dangerous things safely".
It’s hard to build a safe pipe bomb (with one end removed)
@oberonpanopticon No its really not difficult or highly dangerous. Many people in high-powered rocketry still make their own rockets on their own and launch them. Can they be dangerous, absolutely, but like anything, you learn how to make and launch them safely to manage the risk. You can simply browse TH-cam and find many examples of people safely building and launching their own rocket. I was fortunate to have had a great mentor in school who assisted us, and we learned a lot, which has become a lifelong hobby and which I have shared with my children and my grandchildren.
Thanks for the NAR shout out. I've been flying model rockets safely for 32 years. Super fun for the whole family.
Great video Scott keep it up in a long time subscriber going to start commenting more now I’ve shared your videos to friends of mine and I’m so grateful that TH-cam has a person like yourself on it.
I guess you could buy cutting oxygen for a cutting torch, readily available to the public.
Not liquid by any means, but higher pressure at least. Perhaps you could somehow chill that and increase the pressure, i guess it could maybe perhaps possibly work.
Then again those large gas containers are basically rockets by themselves once the cap gets violently removed, so that's probably a more than terrible idea.
I got horror stories from my welding teacher who'd actually seen one of those fall over.
The container's cap struck a metal welding table and broke straight off. That thing went flying across the shop floor until it hit a welding machine and took off straight up through the corrugated steel roof, only to land a couple hundred meters away. Crazy power.
Buying liquid oxygen usually requires a licence or at least the purchase has some oversight by regulatory authorities. Gaseous oxygen is relatively easy to obtain though, for welding purposes or even made at home using oxygen concentrators meant for medical use.
Most folks can buy liquid nitrogen though without jumping through a lot of hoops. An interesting scientific fact is that LN is colder than the temperature that LOX forms so LN can be used to cool down a stream of oxygen gas passed through a coil of copper tubing in a Dewar flask to produce small amounts of liquid oxygen.
My teacher had a video of an argon tank tipping over and proceeding to blast through a cinder block wall.
Virtually all the issues with these chemicals, when bought in sub-pure or insufficiently-pure forms is the inherent danger of the refinement process. Or if it’s not as dangerous, it’s expensive and requires special equipment and additional chemicals to complete the purification. In purer forms, virtually all these chemicals are on banned or highly regulated substance lists due to their ease of use in bomb making.
Many of the restrictions came into being after 9/11/01.
I have to add that it’s not very difficult per se to refine these chemicals-it’s just that a bit of comprehensive knowledge is required to do it *correctly, particularly when it comes to storage and ignition*.
In Europe maybe. In the US you can buy explosives by the pound on the shelves at Rural King (as Tannerite). The only way you end up getting a visit from law enforcement is if you try to buy large quantities (20+ pounds).
I remember reading all about rocket candy in Rocket Boys, which was later fictionalized into October Sky, with some later editions taking the name of the movie. Honestly, while it's very much 'at your own risk', I think having to make their own rockets from scratch taught those guys a lot more than the pre-made hobby motors ever could.
As a former model rocketeer and National Association of Rocketry (NAR) member, I can recommend it for anyone interested in practical experience with designing, building and flying rockets. I did this back in the early- to mid-1970s, as part of a club, and we had a blast (sometimes literally, fortunately on a small scale). Through the NAR we each were covered under a $1,000,000 insurance policy for any damage we might cause, the hobby was that safe.
I still recall being a young teenager going to a city council meeting where we wanted to have a demonstration launch to promote the hobby. This city had an ordinance prohibiting the sale or use of fireworks; we explained that model rockets were not fireworks. "Let's call them missiles, then." suggested a council member, but we had to explain that model rockets were limited to four ounces of total propellant weight and 16 ounces (one pound) liftoff weight; only exceeding those would put them into the "missle" category. We got them to change their ordinance to allow model rockets.
Many people who were NAR members and flew model rockets took their ideas along into adulthood. While looking through one of my old NAR _Model Rocketeer_ newsletters, I saw someone had written that they'd heard that a Star Trek movie was going to be made. That turned out to be _Star Trek: The Motion Picture,_ and the model rocketeer writing about it was named Michael Okuda. He later went on to do graphic design work on Star Trek: The Next Generation and others in the Trek universe. His designs for the displays and control panels were even given the nickname "Okudagrams".
High proof denatured alcohol is available in hardware stores.
Anhydrous ammonia has the great advantage burning one-to-one with liquid oxygen.
I have been told that powdered aluminum from sanding aluminum automotive parts and copper oxide bound in peanut butter works. However the acquaintance that told me this spent most of high school moderately singed but he still had two good eyes, two thumbs, and eight fingers when he went off to UAH to study engineering.
al powder and copper oxide bonded toghether is copper thermite.... high chance of liquid copper spraying around if you manage to light it up
@@stefanomorandi7150
As opposed to iron thermite used in the shuttle's SRBs.
What always worried me is that copper thermite burns a lot faster than iron termite. Given the boom you get from setting off a copper thermite charge I'm thinking a vaporized copper spray.
Refrigeration is perhaps the biggest use centre of anhydrous ammonia. It’s an excellent refrigerant, cheap, biodegradable, no global warming or ozone depletion potential. Just incredibly poisonous, corrosive and not fun to be around.
When it leaks it just fertilizes the ground, and burns away your olfactory cavities. But at least it's safe for the environment, which is most important nowadays.
Sarcasm intended
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 Safe for the environment, eventually...
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 It does raise the Ph of the soil, but in areas with acidic soils this is considered an advantage.
It's really big in agriculture.
Excellent information Mr. Scott!
You always have great content Scott, thank you.
Back in school in the late 70s one of my friends decided to try making thermite as a rocket fuel, he successfully totally wrecked an entire classroom. (Thermite is a mixture of finely ground aluminium and iron oxide used for welding railway tracks together)
🤣🤣🤣
So he mixed the fractions of alum powder and rust and it went boom? Weird...
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 he set fire to it with a magnesium splint he stole from the chemistry lab, he had hoped it would burn smoothly in the room but it went off very fast
I am somewhat confused at the combination of knowledge about how to make and ignite thermite, combined with the apparent ignorance to how it actually behaves...
@@reaganharder1480 13 year old school boy
We tried to make rocket fuel in Chemistry class in high school ... luckily, we failed. I'm a NAR member (High Power Cert 2), so I only use commercial motors. However, our club is both NAR/Tripoli. Some of the Tripoli guys make their own motors ...though sugar motors are rare. Some experiment with liquid fuel as well ... I think they are using hydrogen peroxide and rubber, but I'm not sure. Tripoli is similar certification to NAR, so it tends to be a lot safer, as they know what they are doing, but things can still go wrong.. But yeah, indoors is a really bad place, and don't do this just because you can!! Those of us who enjoy this as a hobby don't need the bad press. Most of those I know who make their own engines do it outside.
Another great video Scott. Thanks.
Missed you Scott. Was checking your channel for a while and now there’s a new video :)
Back in the day in the U.S. we called that sugar concoction "Carmel Candy". I was barely smart enough as a teenager to stay away from it - but I have another rocket fuel story to tell. In high school chem my lab partner didn't agree that I could make rocket fuel by mixing two harmless materials - powdered zinc and sulfur. Obviously I had to make an opposing cash bet. So I mixed the chemicals together on a plate (as I recall 2:1) and put the plate on a tripod over a Bunsen burner. Nothing happened. Well I said we need to get the mixture hotter so why don't YOU pick up the burner and heat the mixture directly (meanwhile I slowly and sneakily stepped back). He did what I asked and within a short time POOOF!! Since not being enclosed the compound didn't explode but a flame shot upward with quite a lot of smoke taking out a ceiling tile or two over our station. And I sure learned a lesson from this event. I (the nerd) and my partner (the athlete) were immediately sent to the principal's office for punishment. We got a "don't do something like this again" message and were then let free. He was a star basketball player. The lesson - choose your lab partners wisely!
Yep, if you want to keep your eyebrows team up with the jock not the nerd.
Propane has seen some success lately with students. Space Enterprise at Berkeley have been rapidly testing LOX-Propane Rockets at FAR, and have been getting remarkable results in just a year. They melted one of my cameras, but it was well worth it.
Always enjoy your way with words and deadpan delivery... not to mention the occasional reference to "Ignition!"
A friend of mine in 7th grade figured out by accident that you could concentrate 3% peroxide to dangerous levels just by letting it evaporate for a few days in a clean glass or ceramic dish. Boiling it caused decomposition, but just letting it evaporate in a dry climate worked wonders (dust also decomposes it, so cleanliness is important). We never titrated it to find out how concentrated it was, but the stuff caused chemical burns on skin almost instantly, so I'd advise against trying that without protecting skin and eyes.
Well, then there is always the option of going to the local high performance auto supply place and getting some nitrous oxide. Combine with some solid fuel source and boom...oh, wait, boom bad....uh, I mean, yeah, you have a hybrid rocket motor.
...and paraffin wax.
Here in Italy you can easily find 90% ethanol which is sold for the purpose of making liquors at home like limoncello (from lemon zests), mandarino/arancino (tangerines/oranges zests) etc. It costs a lot though because of state taxes
In Poland one can get 95% ethanol in most supermarkets and convenience stores. The taxes here also make it not feasible as a rocket fuel.
11:27 That's why I always watch a video in full before commenting. 🤣
Tripoli Rocketry association is the other national organization that does high power rocketry. TRA actually embraced the big stuff way before NAR did. Now both are somewhat aligned and quite similar. You can pick whichever org is near you and they have reciprocity agreements.
Scott,
In my active duty naval career I was the "Oil King" on a destroyer. The "Oil King", as the name implies, keeps track of the fuel onboard, but also maintains the boiler water chemistry. In so doing various indicators solutions were used and made up with ethanol. I had a five gallon can of 190 proof in the ships medical locker and around Christmas about the time of the EOs' party I would draw a couple of liters to mix new reagents. Likely 100 ML would have done the job?
Love your channel
David Vik BT2 USS Fanning DE1076 1971-74
The f is it with you military types that have to provide their full details everywhere?? Thanks for being traceable all across the internet, I guess? Why don't you add your address and SSN while you're at it?
@@Anvilshock Respect and courtesy.
@@psychosis7325 bullshit
Making Hydrogen from electricity is not that trivial.
In order to overcome the binding energy of the HO bond you need to pump 1,2 eV into it. This is the energy that one electron carries with it when flowing through a circuit with a voltage of 1,2 V.
Meaning if you want to turn 100% of your electrical energy into hydrogen you would need to run your electrolyser on 1,2 V DC.
Even the best electrolyser cell cant do that. Lab scale can get 1,4 V and commercially viable ones do get 1,6 V or 75 % efficiency.
When I was a Teenager I was part of an educational programm suppose to teach tech to young people. As a part of this we build a crude electrolyser. We put copper plate electrodes into tap water and Saltwater inside a plastic container.
We could get it running at 20 V in the salt water, not in the tap water.
In University we had a small electrolyser based on an 19th century design. It used platnum electrodes insdie a U-tube filled with weak sulphuric acid. The puropse of that thing was to teach us experimenting, we had to determine faradys constant with it.
I used it to determine its efficiency.
It ran on 12 V, so you know from the start it is not more than 10%.
But it actually is worse, I measured the amount of hydrogen and based on its energy content it was only 8%. So either hydrogen leaker or we performed charge transfer via other ions.
So using electrolysis to make hydrogen at home is not a godd idea. It wont give you large amounts and only at great energy expenditure that you cant afford.
If you want small amounts of hydrogen to fill balloons or whatever, just dissolve some aluminium in hydrocloric acid, The gas that this will produce is hydrogen.
Couldn't you use a voltage divider to get 10 1.2VDC points from a 12VDC supply?
@@somerandomnification The difficulty is not to get the voltage. That's easy. The problem is to make your electrolyser work at this low voltage.
@@ilyapopov823 I see - I'm obviously way out of my depth. :) Thanks for the reply.
I was aware that electrolysis was inefficient but I didn't know why.
I love how you mentioned @explosion&fire he is amazing!
Interestingly enough, in Italy you can find 96% food grade alcohol in every supermarket, even small local shops.
It's a widespread tradition to make homemade liquors, so you can find pure alcohol basically everywhere (although quite heavily taxed since it's a state monopoly).
@@danielrollin5542 80/20 dilution?
The best approach to building your own rocket from scratch is probably to use make a hybrid using Paraffin Wax and... well, some oxidizer. Paraffin Wax/LOX can supposedly get RP1-like performance. The Wax is cheap, easy to get, and even more easily molded than most solid propellant grains. The oxidizer is more tricky.
The problem is that wax melts too easily. It's no good if your propellant grain gets all runny.
@@RobertSzasz Well that's really a matter of the local climate of where your launching, now isn't it? Sure, that's an issue if you're launching from Mojave, but in Montana your probably fine.
I’ve made rocket fuel before with electrolysis of table salt. It’s a very rewarding feeling watching a homemade rocket motor work, because you know that you did all the calculations correctly, and because you probably failed multiple times while trying.
Still dangerous, but the fun kind.
can you explain to me the chemistry involved? not planning to make any, of course
Yes, please explain. I'm planning to.
In high school I was quite good at chemistry, theory and practise. I never followed up on a career in chemistry, I went into hands-on IT instead.
@@walter7825 It's a pretty simple reaction to make the oxidizer. If you use table salt, you'll end up with sodium chlorate which is very hydrophilic (it pulls water out of the air). I used potassium chlorate because it isn't hydrophilic, and it is fairly insoluble in water. Either way, you use the chloride in a fairly concentrated solution, then you run your electrolysis for however long it takes to go from KCl to KClO3. The solution has to stay up near 80 C in order for the chlorate to be favored thermodynamically, and you might also produce some perchlorate. Once that's finished, you take the solution and boil it off. Then you add just enough hot water to dissolve the solution if it were all the original salt. Take that solution and put in the freezer so it gets to 0 C. The chlorate should crash out of solution, and then you can then filter it with something like a coffee filter. The yield won't be insanely high, but it's fairly pure for homemade oxidizer. After that, it's as simple as using sugar to make [REDACTED].
I actually tried this with wood ash, and it sort of worked, but not anywhere near well enough to make [REDACTED].
Yep. If you electrolize solution cooled with an ice bath (near 0 degrees Celsius) you end up with bleach (sodium hypochorite.)
This is one of your best videos ever!
Awesome Scott. Got a good chuckle
Kerosene is available in many midwest gas stations at a pump around the side. It is a common heating fuel.
the one for heating is even less pure so it's not that good for rockets. You need lamp-grade kerosene (yes kerosene lamps are still a thing)
Like you said, Midwest. In the Southern states it's difficult or expensive to find. The cheapest I can find is 5 gal jugs ordered at Home Depot for $37 and wait 2-3 weeks. IF, anyone has it local it's at least $10/gal and not available at a pump.
I've made liquid Oxygen at home took copper tubing, liquid Nitrogen, and a air pump. Not sure on how pure it was but it was a blue color and burned really well.
Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket also uses propane and liquid oxygen and we might see it launch this year! Great video!
We used to buy Everclear 190 proof by driving across the border to Wisconsin. That's the only bottle of liquor I had that actually came with a flame suppressor / strainer attached to the bottle, as it's that scary compared to a normal proof bottle. :D
As someone who has a Lvl 1 NAR Cert, i think it would be an interesting video if you compared NAR to Tripoli Rocketry Association (TRA). As i understand it, NAR only lets you use commercially produced motors while TRA allows for more experimentation, especially in regards to rocket motors. Great video as always!
H2O2 is no longer recommended as wound cleaner. The fizzing is more from damage to our tissue than any antiseptic action, which btw, is much less than was assumed.
Still great for surfaces just not people.
Reminds me of my time in boot camp when no one would let you buy stuff to treat minor injuries because that meant you were weak (no joke). I had a two inch area on my knee where much of the skin had come off and I treated it with germX. It worked, but it hurt.
He did use dentistry as an example, which I assume avoids the tissue damage because there isn't an open wound.
@@Br3ttM your mouth is made of human tissue, no?
@@aalhard The enamel is not a tissue. It's a special reinforced version of apatite the body can make when creating new teeth.
@@jannikheidemann3805 and everything that isn't teeth is what?
Great, down-to-earth talk episode!
Nobody on TH-cam is as smart about a thing, as Scott Manley is about everything he talks about.
A russian MIG had a climate controll that used alcohol to evaporate and cool the cockpit. There are stories told that most of the time the pilots came back from training flights sweating as hell and disposing of climate controll fluids into personal containers.
Reaction Engines SABRE Rocket is every shade of cool.
It's liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fueled but air breathing up to a certain altitude, then switches over to internal LOX for the mach 5 to 25 burn.
It sounds like a lot but the LOX tanks are TINY. Just an itty bitty tank at the tail.
they are not just cool, they are _pre_ cool!
I am still not convinced the thing will work in actual flight. I have an image of the thing turning into a giant icicle 5 mins into the mission.
The only difference between RP-1 and Jet A is that RP-1 is a lighter and therefore more energetic distillate. RP-1 has so much junk removed from it in distillation it is known as water clear. Even Methane power, a lighter fuel than RP-1 has impurities in the gas. When Starship goes up it leaves a brown trail behind which are the products of combustion.
Thanks Scott for clearing up for me if it was a gas or a liquid coming out of those injectors. You're the first I've run into to say anything nor have I seen anything in print.
I fondly remember the Everclear parties we threw while I was in SAC back in the '70s.
I've got great experience with r-candy. Always have a fire extinguisher at hand and check the temprature of your mixture while heating with a infrared termometer and your gonna be golden (around 100 degrees celcius for sorbitol, a little bit higher for dextrose). Over 30 kilos of thrust possible from a hand held motor. Just take care of your safety, heat the mixture with an electric heater (without flame sources) in an open space. In case you have an accidental ignition there will be no way to stop it, all you can do is make sure (with the extinguisher you have at hand) that the fire doesn't spread.
I never bothered with the cooking thing. The saltpeter and (icing) sugar were dehydrated as much as possible, and the former well reduced in grain size. Mixed thoroughly with a trace of chimney soot for accelerant and well-packed and finished with nail in and out for the surface area core.
@@-danR Never heard of this method - sounds great but you loose the casting possibilites for bigger motors (core diameter around half an inch)
eh, if it starts to go sideways you just flush it down the toilet
@@spacewolfjr I would advise strongly against this solution. You might send the contents of your toilet on a suborbital trajectory.
Isn't this basically how the JPL got started? Students making rocket fuel has a long and distinguished history 🤓
Woooh! Mark Watney knowledge... XD I thought the same thing
Ok, this whole video was immensely fun to watch. Not that your other content isn't enjoyable, but many of your videos are meat-and-potatoes space news and rocket science/reviews that appeal more to hard-core aerospace nerds like myself, but aren't necessarily "entertaining". This however was absolutely entertaining. Everything from the snarky remark about the rest of the news, to the plug for NAR (don't forget Tripoli Rocketry Association!), to the quip about pink anime hair (which my pink-haired wife found hilarious) to the full circle inquiry as to the reasoning behind the presence of the toilet in the living room.
Bravo, Scott. Bravo!
"that classic anime pink look"
I was not expecting that line to come from that face
Back when I was trying to get my Master's, one of my classmates from my undergrad program was also attending classes. Said he wanted to make a rocket company like SpaceX (This was around 2014-2015, so shortly after the success of the Falcon9). He was quirky and weird, but I figured, "What the hell, let's see what he's got."
It was sugar rockets in cheap stainless steel rocket tubes that looked like converted CO2 cartridges.
It was kinda fun, making the sugar fuel mixture and then getting it into the tubes... but I felt like a jerk lighting them off and having the smoke go EVERYWHERE.
Of course, he came on campus, one day, holding a heavy bag full of... something. He showed me. It was powdered aluminum. In a plastic shopping bag. Dude brought powdered aluminum onto a public university campus...
trying to get a master's? you mean some people fail to get one? not at my pony "best of the best" UK uni...
So, given 'High Power Rockets', here's the important question:
What's the closest anyone's ever come to modeling a full Space Shuttle Stack - Liquid mains, SRBs, and a radio controlled glider-reentry?
there's gonna be an issue with the liquid mains, but if uou leave that aside many people have done full-solid renditions
Top Gear tried something like this. Using a Reliant Robin as the ahem orbiter. They used solids though. It was the largest private rocket in the UK.
When I was a kid in grade school my dad was into model rocketry. After umpteen dozen launches and parachute recoveries, his foot-tall Columbia model rocket had been repaired so many times that parts were coming off on launch.
He was also a blackpowder muzzle-loader buff. So the final flight of the model Columbia shuttle saw the parachute replaced with a black powder charge. When it cooked off several hundred feet up there was really nothing left to find.
I know this sounds in bad taste, but this happened about two weeks _before_ the tragic loss of the actual Columbia.
Yessss, explosions and fire / extractions and ire is great!
1:01 I love the photo on the NAR website; someone holding a rocket talking to a youth in a wife beater and trying to impress upon him the tremendous importance of the pointy end pointing up and the flamey end pointing down.
“I don’t recommend building an amateur solid rocket engine with rocket candy, instead get certified for higher powers and build your own liquid engine with alcohol.”
That’s so much safer not haha
"Don't drink the 60+ percent stuff"
Speaking as someone who has drunk Stroh 80 and 95% Polish rectified spirit neat to win bets before,
Yea good advice actually, the high alcohol percentage really doesn't benefit anything besides the bragging rights and potentially won bets.
I've tried Everclear 151(proof) straight, and it "cleans" the mucous from you mouth and throat, to make it burn even more. 100 proof is about the limit for what I'll drink straight. Anything stronger just lets you make mixed drinks without diluting them with extra water.
it is actually not so convenient to drink 95% alcohol because it got absorbed and also evaporates quickly in your mouth - warm tongue etc ....... drinking a bigger sip means - very little would make it to your stomach - unless you know how to (drink fast) .... tried that a few times
thanx. I needed that. good, clean fun.
My soviet rocket building kink just came back, thanks!
Local forests here in Finland grow hypergolic rocket fuel component every spring. Gyromitra esculenta (the false morel) has gyromitrin which - when hydrolysed for example inside a human - becomes monomethylhydrazine (MMH). The mushroom is very very delicious, but some care needs to be taken when preparing it...
In my case it's mostly anime purple. I was going for Xenovia except with a purple base instead of a blue base, but I do have the green stripe.
That was really well done. :)
You left out the Tripoli rocketry association, they were sort of ahead of the NAR with the high power stuff. That said way back pre-9/11 there was a company in Canada that advertised a kit for a high power liquid fueled rocket that used unleaded gasoline and 50% hydrogen peroxide. It also used dry ice to pressurize the fuel and oxidizer tank. Thus sort of caught my interest at the time because in the past I had used 50% H2O2 to disinfect green house evaporative cooling system and it was nasty sneaking stuff. So at a trade show I asked someone who was selling 20% as a greenhouse disinfectant was 50% available. I was told the BATF sort of really regulated the sale of over 20% concentration.
BTW the nursery I used to work at after Hurricane Andrew was rented to some guys that were building hybrid rocket motors for the high power community. One of these motors was nick named by hobbyists as the "Taco Bell L" for the sound it made. Of course later IIRC they made the motor for Spaceship One.