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Need help with a rocket motor ID



 
 
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  #31  
Old February 3rd 07, 02:18 PM posted to alt.binaries.pictures.aviation
William R Thompson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 150
Default Need help with a rocket motor ID - no more calls, we have our winner.

"Dave Kearton" wrote:

I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in
service and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.


As Esmarelda whispered to Quasimodo "It's only a hunch, but I can't ignore
it"


I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and
hopefully
they'll own up to it as well.


http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm


Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
way
was a lot more educational.


I think you have it. Here's another picture, from

http://www.astronautix.com/engines/p41ainer.htm

--Bill Thompson




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  #32  
Old February 3rd 07, 02:23 PM posted to alt.binaries.pictures.aviation
Dave Kearton
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,453
Default Need help with a rocket motor ID - no more calls, we have our winner.

"William R Thompson" wrote in message
link.net...
"Dave Kearton" wrote:

I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in
service and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.


As Esmarelda whispered to Quasimodo "It's only a hunch, but I can't
ignore
it"


I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and
hopefully
they'll own up to it as well.


http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm


Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
way
was a lot more educational.


I think you have it. Here's another picture, from

http://www.astronautix.com/engines/p41ainer.htm

--Bill Thompson





The Stromberg twin barrel carbie on that one would make it go like a cut
cat.




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton


  #33  
Old February 3rd 07, 02:23 PM posted to alt.binaries.pictures.aviation
Dave Kearton
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,453
Default Need help with a rocket motor ID - no more calls, we have our winner.

"William R Thompson" wrote in message
link.net...
"Dave Kearton" wrote:

I'm currently trying to get comparision pics of the Rocketdyne LR64-NA-4
from the AQM-37. It was a fairly common engine - over 5K in
service and possibly matches the size of the engine with the airframe.


As Esmarelda whispered to Quasimodo "It's only a hunch, but I can't
ignore
it"


I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and
hopefully
they'll own up to it as well.


http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm


Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
way
was a lot more educational.


I think you have it. Here's another picture, from

http://www.astronautix.com/engines/p41ainer.htm

--Bill Thompson





The Stromberg twin barrel carbie on that one would make it go like a cut
cat.




--

Cheers

Dave Kearton


  #34  
Old February 3rd 07, 03:20 PM posted to alt.binaries.pictures.aviation
William R Thompson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 150
Default Need help with a rocket motor ID - no more calls, we have our winner.


"Dave Kearton" wrote:

I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and
hopefully they'll own up to it as well.


http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm


Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
way was a lot more educational.


I'm guessing that you were answered by Oswald Mosley, a man
with nothing to say and no trouble proving it.

http://www.astronautix.com/engines/p41ainer.htm


The Stromberg twin barrel carbie on that one would make it go like a cut
cat.


According to astronautix.com at

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/aqm37.htm

the AQM-37 can do up to Mach 3 or 4, depending on the version.
It's a target drone, and the article in your pictures is probably the
sustainer engine (the bigger thrust chamber must give it the initial
boost up to speed, but it would burn a lot of fuel). Propellants are
identified as liquid oxygen and kerosene. At least five thousand of
these drones have been manufactured since 1959. Even allowing
for the number that must have splashed into the oceans, it seems
likely that one of them could have landed in the Skylab Parking Lot.

--Bill Thompson




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  #35  
Old February 3rd 07, 03:20 PM posted to alt.binaries.pictures.aviation
William R Thompson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 150
Default Need help with a rocket motor ID - no more calls, we have our winner.


"Dave Kearton" wrote:

I'm pretty sure the beast we're looking at is an LR64 variant, leastways
that's close enough for me. I've sent a pic off to PWR and
hopefully they'll own up to it as well.


http://www.aeroconsystems.com/motors/lr64.htm


Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
way was a lot more educational.


I'm guessing that you were answered by Oswald Mosley, a man
with nothing to say and no trouble proving it.

http://www.astronautix.com/engines/p41ainer.htm


The Stromberg twin barrel carbie on that one would make it go like a cut
cat.


According to astronautix.com at

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/aqm37.htm

the AQM-37 can do up to Mach 3 or 4, depending on the version.
It's a target drone, and the article in your pictures is probably the
sustainer engine (the bigger thrust chamber must give it the initial
boost up to speed, but it would burn a lot of fuel). Propellants are
identified as liquid oxygen and kerosene. At least five thousand of
these drones have been manufactured since 1959. Even allowing
for the number that must have splashed into the oceans, it seems
likely that one of them could have landed in the Skylab Parking Lot.

--Bill Thompson




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  #36  
Old February 3rd 07, 10:34 PM posted to alt.binaries.pictures.aviation
Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 31
Default Need help with a rocket motor ID

wrote:


I see that there was a lot of discussion I didn't read. I am glad to
see that the source was tracked down. But, I am I bit surprised to see
it was from Rocketdyne.

"jc" wrote:

"About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
provision for ignition.


It is hard to tell anything about an engine based on ignition
provisions or lack of them. In "the old days" LOX/RP engines had
pyrotechnic igniters (the Atlas ones were called "ROFIs". That was
"Radially Outward Firing Igniters". They were a can that screwed into
the injector plate. You wouldn't find them on a recovered engine.
Almost everyone forgot what a "ROFI" was, and called all pyrotechnics,
specifically the axially firing ones around the base of the Shuttle,
to prevent hydrogen accumulation, "ROFIs".)

In the early 1960s, hypergol "leads" were developed for and were used
for the Atlas and all similar Rocketdyne engines. Like the H-1, F-1
and RS-27. The usual one was "TEA". Triethylaluminum. (Now, you talk
about NASTY….) That was placed in a cartridge some were in the
propellant lines, like the parts missing from this one. So, you
wouldn't see that, either. Only LOX/Hydrogen engines usually have
spark plug ignition.

Hypergols are binary propellants
that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.


In the early 1940s the Navy had a program to develop "RATO" headed by
Bob Truax, just out of the academy at the time. They used aniline and
concentrated nitric acid. That started a whole branch of rocket engine
development, which are what is usually meant by "hypergols".
Successive generations used fuels like hydrazine hydrate, then
hydrazine (and UDMH and MMH.) The acid was "spiked" by adding nitrogen
oxides, NO2/N2O4 to get WFNA and then RFNA and finally, the acid was
dispensed with and the straight oxides were used. Chemically, you can
think of this as starting with the "NH2-" part of the aniline and
eliminating hydrocarbon bits until you get straight hydrazine
"H2N=NH2" (or a few methyl groups) and combining that with the
oxidizer which started as the nitrogen oxides plus water and
progressively eliminating the water.

One reason for the progression was availability of the chemicals
involved. In the early 1940 there was no industrial production of
hydrazine and hydrazine hydrate was mainly, if not exclusively
produced in Germany. Likewise, nitrogen oxides were widely produced
but were not handled in the pure form. All that required development.

(For airplanes, RATO lost out to the army developed "JATO" solid
propellant "boosters.")

The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
peroxide


While Truax and the boys were doing RATO, the Germans were busy too.
At the time, Germany had the world lead in chemistry and particularly
in the production of hydrazine hydrate and hydrogen peroxide. They
especially loved schemes that used hydrogen peroxide in some way. In
the US, peroxide was always looked on with great suspicion as
something infernal and demonic and eliminated as quickly as possible
(One can see this sort of thing still going on. The Russians use UDMH
and Peroxide but no hydrazine. That has been an on going problem with
the ISS and the Russians wouldn't even talk about replacing their
monoprop systems with hydrazine where as we wouldn't consider using
anything else.)

There are several ways that you can use peroxide. One is as a
monoprop. Usually to do that, you use a catalyst and permanganates are
traditional. You can either use that as a solid, impregnated into some
ceramic, say. Or as a water solution. In the WW II era, the Germans
had a hard time making a good solid catalyst.

To get better performance, you can add use fuel with the peroxide
making a biprop. One way is to use the decomposed peroxide exhaust
oxygen and steam at high temperature. That works great. The other way
is to use unreacted peroxide with a fuel, just as would be done with
LOX.

At various times, the Me163 used water solution catalyst and biprop
both (one at a time). And maybe monoprop too.

I always like to say that "Fuels that are not hyperbolic with peroxide
are not even worth talking about (and probably don't deserve to be
called "fuel")" but when say that, I have in mind the hot peroxide.
With cold peroxide, furfuryl alcohol might be an ignition enhancer.
But the only actual use of it that I know of was on the Nike Ajax in
the "days of yore." The Nike main propellants were aniline and acid
(RFNA I think.). Those are hyperbolic, but not quite as reliably as
was desired, sometimes you could get a little lag which might cause a
"pop." Not good. So furfuryl alcohol was used as a "hypergol lead"
just as I described for TEA

This was explained to my tour group (of aspiring ordnance officers) by
a many-striped NCO at a Nike battery just outside DC.

"They use to have this stuff, and they called it furfuryl alcohol. So,
they worked on it, and worked on it, and improved it, and improved it,
and now they call it 'UDMH'".

I thought that was a really great explanation.

and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff.


The Germans had a lot of "stoff" but "C-stoff" and "T-stoff" were the
most common.
That was the
stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
one of the stoffs was hydrazine.



Not even the Germans had hydrazine in quantity in the WW II era, but
they did have the hydrate.

Someone on 'sci.space' said that

T-Stoff, was a mixture of 80% hydrogen peroxide plus
oxyquinoline or phosphate as a stabilizer. [most of the other 20
percent would have been water. _hh]

And that

C-Stoff was a mixture of 57% methanol + 30% hydrazine hydrate + 13%
water, with
traces of either cupro-potassium cyanide or copper oxide (probably as
a
stabilizer).

I accept those as being correct. Methanol the kind of stuff you would
want as a fuel. The hydrazine hydrate would be added to provide
"smooth combustion" and the water may have resulted from using the
highest concentration of hydrazine hydrate that was available, or
possibly it was just added as coolant.

(Usually wiki is a really good place for this kind of stuff, but I
didn't find the exact numbers there)

That's some nasty stuff, it
dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
and human soup. Yuck!


All those things may have happened in Germany in WW II. I don't know.
All I do know is that if you do the tests now, nothing like that
happens.

If you pour peroxide on yourself, or your buddy, even high strength
stuff, it may find some catalyst in your clothing, like a dye, say. In
that case, the peroxide will decompose, setting clothing (and then
flesh) on fire.

If you have compatible clothing, just ordinary clothing, not "space
suits" usually nothing happens. Nothing. Well, maybe a little skin
rash.

For long-term exposure, peroxide probably has less actual data about
ill effects than city air or water. One source I recall stated "not a
toxin" in the usual sense. Lately I understand there has become a fad
of "shooting up" peroxide, medium strength stuff, for what purpose I
can't say. Not recommended by me.

Hydrazine, in any strength or quantity, probably has similar effects
to a gasoline spill. If it doesn't catch fire there won't be prompt
effects. Read the safety manuals; there are probably more toxic
warnings about gasoline than hydrazine.

Rocket Research (one of the leading hydrazine thruster suppliers) had
their expert search the medical literature. He found zero cases of
prompt death from hydrazine exposure. Long term effects were debatable
when I was involved.

At one time, the main commercial use of hydrazine hydrate was for
deoxidizing feed water for steam boilers. The "Stationary Engineers"
that did this sort of thing were, it seemed to me, a good test case
for this, as they didn't seem to be all that meticulous. One confused
the beer bottle he was carrying his deoxidant in with the one he was
drinking his Carlsberg out of. He not only didn't die; he didn't seem
to have any long term effects. There was another guy though, who
eventually did die, but only after what were said in the medical
report of years of habitual careless exposure.

Hydrazine (and UDMH and MMH) are often used in conjunction with N2O4
so they "get tarred with the same brush." You are not going to tell
propellant handlers "be really careful with this stuff but you don't
have to worry so quite as much about that stuff."

N2O4 is at least 10 times as toxic for prompt effects as hydrazine. It
scares the heck out of me, and I am a "rocket scientist". And everyone
knows we rocket scientists don't have good sense.

One thing I read said that persons exposed have this symptom and that
symptom and in a couple of days they get better. And, then in a couple
of more days, they die.

It is hard to find people in the rocket biz that have had long term
exposure to hydrazine that have not also be exposed to N2O4 so when
there are stories about long term effects, you don't know which to
blame. But I will take the alternative to "in a couple of more days,
they die." Better chronic than prompt.


I have heard all those scare stories, many times.(Probably told some,
too.) I was the program manager of some hydrazine thruster
development programs for the ISS at one time. The NASA world was split
between the hydrazine advocates and the O2/H2 advocates. There got to
be a bit of mud flying there, and I got my share.



(NASA couldn't decide between the options, or rather they did choose,
several times, but the kept switching back and forth. Finally, when
the Russians got involved, and were going to provide the propulsion
for free, I heard no objections to their use of UDMH/N204, even from
the same people that had objected t hydrazine as too toxic and too
contaminating. UDMH/N2O4 is much worse on both counts.)



Manzo Zeigler's "Rocket Fighter" describes C-stoff as
"thirty percent hydrazine hydrate solution in methyl alcohol"
and T-stoff as "forty-eight percent concentrated hydrogen
peroxide and a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds."


I have read that book, and everything I could find when I was
proposing "cuddly" propellants to NASA about 20 years ago.

Do not mix hydrocarbons with peroxide! Leave that to the terrorists
who intend to be human bombs, because you are likely to be one
intended or not.

I have no explanation of the many descriptions of Me163 explosions. I
don't think any of them sounded like they had to be "chemical yield"
explosions. I think that some may have been mechanical propellant tank
ruptures.

(In ordnance circles, I got into this thing of distinguishing between
"high order" explosions or "detonations and "low order" explosions or
deflagrations. Then there are "no yield" ones, like tank ruptures. I
use to rankle when people talked about auto gas tanks exploding, or
example. Then I read some dictionaries. The "sufficient" definition of
an "explosion" seems to be some event in which a noise was heard.)

One thing that was more hazardous on the Me163 than the exotic (for
then) propellants was the operational scenario. Take off, climb to
combat altitude, run out of propellant, glide to a landing spot, and
be stuck on the ground on the landing skids.

The allied pilots quickly figured that out, and that there was little
to be done about powered flight, so they just waited and followed them
down and nailed them on the ground. It is a wonder that anyone had any
stories about explosions, they should have all been killed.

My conclusion from trying to find out what happened was that the
Luffwaffe was totally negligent in keeping any useful accident reports
in the WW II era, at least that I found.


Some
brilliant and possibly pro-Ally designer placed extra fuel tanks
inside the cockpit.

A few years ago I listened to a lecture by a rocket engineer
who had known one of the Komet's engineers. When asked
about the Komet's lethality the German said "It did not kill
half its pilots! It killed no more than one in three!"



I like that story.

But, I don't consider it "evidence."


Designers are often told that "You have t listen to what the user
says, they were the ones that know what is going on.

I agree that you should listen. But you should evaluate what you hear.
Anyone's "eye witness account" is likely to be highly biased and
frequently just imaginary.

One of my "non rocket" interests armored warfare. (I had a slight
professional involvement, back in the knight errant days.) In WW II,
"as every school boy knows" (but I want evidence) German armor was
overwhelmingly superior to US armor.

And the US tankers would often tell you those stories themselves
(although all eye witness accounts are prone to flip back and forth
between "we were helpless" and "we got them all" modes.).

I found one detailed account of an independent tank battalion written
by the son of one of the unit members. It was largely based on the
stories the survivors said at reunions. Man, those guys had no chance
against German tanks. Period.

But, the account included a description of nearly every loss of US
tanks. Many, many times it is impossible to know just what the cause
of a loss was. You don't know if you were hit by an opposing tank, an
AT gun, or a passing asteroid. But, many of the losses did have known
causes. And in many cases it was not enemy tanks, for sure. Like the
guy that inadvertently drove his M-4 off a bridge and it sank in the
river.

Likewise, you don't always know if you really killed enemy tanks or
not. Over claiming is very frequent.

But, when I added it all up (which the author did not) these poor
guys, who were completely overmatched, lost only something like a
third of their tanks to German tanks. Yet, by their own count, they
destroyed more German tanks than they lost, to all causes. A kill
ratio of something like four in their own favor.

The Germans, OTOH seldom admit losing any tanks to anything at all.
Hey, something went with them.

Part of the explanation was the resupply situation. If the ash trays
in your M-4 filled up and you took it to Ordnance, they were likely to
say "Well, park it over there with the rest of the scrap and take one
of the backlog of unused ones parked over there."

The Germans (say post d-Day in Northern France) were not getting any
more tanks, so they weren't scraping any, no matter what. So, even if
the hull was in one village and the turret had been blown to the next
one, they still counted it as "being repaired" no matter that they had
no parts or equipment to do that.

The Germans were said to have about 1800 AFVs in northern France on
D-Day.

I have seen accounts that said that the RAF destroyed 1800 German AFVs
in the Falance pocket on the last day of the collapse.

I have also seen accounts that essentially buy the German version and
ascribe all the losses to "envelopment."

It is no wonder that people cite phenomenal kill ratios. Take your
pick.

On the Me163 I have seen a lot of German accounts of them
spontaneously exploding, but I don't recall one single one of a loss
to enemy action. There are many stories by the allies of blasting
Me163s on the ground, but of course, they wouldn't have known about
spontaneous explosions.

Another possible explanation is structural failure, or materials
compatibility problems.

I have never found a real explanation of how the Me163 worked, but it
had to be a pressure fed system. I have never seen or heard of a
peroxide pump. That means there were large pressurized tanks, which
probably were not all that conservatively designed. A bit of a bump on
landing and the tank pops, spraying residual propellant, peroxide or
alcohol/hydrazine about.

And, what were those tanks made of. There was only one material that
would be considered a "structural material that was available to the
Germans in WW II that was peroxide. Pure (and therefore dead soft)
aluminum. Well, that is not consistent with having a flying
pressurized tank, so the material was incompatible. Usually that means
that it sits around for a shorter or longer period of time, depending
on how incompatible the material is. Then the peroxide starts to
decompose a bit; temperature goes up a bit. Vicious circle ensues.
Boom. But that is not usually really "peroxide explosion" either.
Just a tank overpressure ("Not to worry, there was no nuclear yield".)

And, what were the seals and all the other bits made of. I was once
reading a report on the X-1 which was very like an American Lox Me163
and at about the same time. There was something about an explosion and
a fire. The report said they weren't sure what happened, but they
though it might have involved a seal. (I think maybe it was in a check
valve and lit off when the valve closure slammed on it.) They then
started to discuss what sort of special, proprietary LEATHER (!) the
seal was made of. I quit reading.

All I can say is, old war stories may be interesting. I have told a
few myself. But, one has to interpret them in light of other stuff,
like facts.



--Bill Thompson


Henry H.
  #37  
Old February 3rd 07, 10:34 PM posted to alt.binaries.pictures.aviation
Henry_H@Q_cyber.org[_1_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 31
Default Need help with a rocket motor ID

wrote:


I see that there was a lot of discussion I didn't read. I am glad to
see that the source was tracked down. But, I am I bit surprised to see
it was from Rocketdyne.

"jc" wrote:

"About all I can add to this discussion is that I'd agree
it's probably designed for hypergols since there's no
provision for ignition.


It is hard to tell anything about an engine based on ignition
provisions or lack of them. In "the old days" LOX/RP engines had
pyrotechnic igniters (the Atlas ones were called "ROFIs". That was
"Radially Outward Firing Igniters". They were a can that screwed into
the injector plate. You wouldn't find them on a recovered engine.
Almost everyone forgot what a "ROFI" was, and called all pyrotechnics,
specifically the axially firing ones around the base of the Shuttle,
to prevent hydrogen accumulation, "ROFIs".)

In the early 1960s, hypergol "leads" were developed for and were used
for the Atlas and all similar Rocketdyne engines. Like the H-1, F-1
and RS-27. The usual one was "TEA". Triethylaluminum. (Now, you talk
about NASTY….) That was placed in a cartridge some were in the
propellant lines, like the parts missing from this one. So, you
wouldn't see that, either. Only LOX/Hydrogen engines usually have
spark plug ignition.

Hypergols are binary propellants
that use 2 liquids that spontaneously combust on contact.


In the early 1940s the Navy had a program to develop "RATO" headed by
Bob Truax, just out of the academy at the time. They used aniline and
concentrated nitric acid. That started a whole branch of rocket engine
development, which are what is usually meant by "hypergols".
Successive generations used fuels like hydrazine hydrate, then
hydrazine (and UDMH and MMH.) The acid was "spiked" by adding nitrogen
oxides, NO2/N2O4 to get WFNA and then RFNA and finally, the acid was
dispensed with and the straight oxides were used. Chemically, you can
think of this as starting with the "NH2-" part of the aniline and
eliminating hydrocarbon bits until you get straight hydrazine
"H2N=NH2" (or a few methyl groups) and combining that with the
oxidizer which started as the nitrogen oxides plus water and
progressively eliminating the water.

One reason for the progression was availability of the chemicals
involved. In the early 1940 there was no industrial production of
hydrazine and hydrazine hydrate was mainly, if not exclusively
produced in Germany. Likewise, nitrogen oxides were widely produced
but were not handled in the pure form. All that required development.

(For airplanes, RATO lost out to the army developed "JATO" solid
propellant "boosters.")

The only 2 I can name are furfuryl alcohol with hydrogen
peroxide


While Truax and the boys were doing RATO, the Germans were busy too.
At the time, Germany had the world lead in chemistry and particularly
in the production of hydrazine hydrate and hydrogen peroxide. They
especially loved schemes that used hydrogen peroxide in some way. In
the US, peroxide was always looked on with great suspicion as
something infernal and demonic and eliminated as quickly as possible
(One can see this sort of thing still going on. The Russians use UDMH
and Peroxide but no hydrazine. That has been an on going problem with
the ISS and the Russians wouldn't even talk about replacing their
monoprop systems with hydrazine where as we wouldn't consider using
anything else.)

There are several ways that you can use peroxide. One is as a
monoprop. Usually to do that, you use a catalyst and permanganates are
traditional. You can either use that as a solid, impregnated into some
ceramic, say. Or as a water solution. In the WW II era, the Germans
had a hard time making a good solid catalyst.

To get better performance, you can add use fuel with the peroxide
making a biprop. One way is to use the decomposed peroxide exhaust
oxygen and steam at high temperature. That works great. The other way
is to use unreacted peroxide with a fuel, just as would be done with
LOX.

At various times, the Me163 used water solution catalyst and biprop
both (one at a time). And maybe monoprop too.

I always like to say that "Fuels that are not hyperbolic with peroxide
are not even worth talking about (and probably don't deserve to be
called "fuel")" but when say that, I have in mind the hot peroxide.
With cold peroxide, furfuryl alcohol might be an ignition enhancer.
But the only actual use of it that I know of was on the Nike Ajax in
the "days of yore." The Nike main propellants were aniline and acid
(RFNA I think.). Those are hyperbolic, but not quite as reliably as
was desired, sometimes you could get a little lag which might cause a
"pop." Not good. So furfuryl alcohol was used as a "hypergol lead"
just as I described for TEA

This was explained to my tour group (of aspiring ordnance officers) by
a many-striped NCO at a Nike battery just outside DC.

"They use to have this stuff, and they called it furfuryl alcohol. So,
they worked on it, and worked on it, and improved it, and improved it,
and now they call it 'UDMH'".

I thought that was a really great explanation.

and the WW2 German bstoff and cstoff.


The Germans had a lot of "stoff" but "C-stoff" and "T-stoff" were the
most common.
That was the
stuff used in the ME163 Comet rocket plane, I'm pretty sure
one of the stoffs was hydrazine.



Not even the Germans had hydrazine in quantity in the WW II era, but
they did have the hydrate.

Someone on 'sci.space' said that

T-Stoff, was a mixture of 80% hydrogen peroxide plus
oxyquinoline or phosphate as a stabilizer. [most of the other 20
percent would have been water. _hh]

And that

C-Stoff was a mixture of 57% methanol + 30% hydrazine hydrate + 13%
water, with
traces of either cupro-potassium cyanide or copper oxide (probably as
a
stabilizer).

I accept those as being correct. Methanol the kind of stuff you would
want as a fuel. The hydrazine hydrate would be added to provide
"smooth combustion" and the water may have resulted from using the
highest concentration of hydrazine hydrate that was available, or
possibly it was just added as coolant.

(Usually wiki is a really good place for this kind of stuff, but I
didn't find the exact numbers there)

That's some nasty stuff, it
dissolves flesh. I've heard stories about accidental leaks
and human soup. Yuck!


All those things may have happened in Germany in WW II. I don't know.
All I do know is that if you do the tests now, nothing like that
happens.

If you pour peroxide on yourself, or your buddy, even high strength
stuff, it may find some catalyst in your clothing, like a dye, say. In
that case, the peroxide will decompose, setting clothing (and then
flesh) on fire.

If you have compatible clothing, just ordinary clothing, not "space
suits" usually nothing happens. Nothing. Well, maybe a little skin
rash.

For long-term exposure, peroxide probably has less actual data about
ill effects than city air or water. One source I recall stated "not a
toxin" in the usual sense. Lately I understand there has become a fad
of "shooting up" peroxide, medium strength stuff, for what purpose I
can't say. Not recommended by me.

Hydrazine, in any strength or quantity, probably has similar effects
to a gasoline spill. If it doesn't catch fire there won't be prompt
effects. Read the safety manuals; there are probably more toxic
warnings about gasoline than hydrazine.

Rocket Research (one of the leading hydrazine thruster suppliers) had
their expert search the medical literature. He found zero cases of
prompt death from hydrazine exposure. Long term effects were debatable
when I was involved.

At one time, the main commercial use of hydrazine hydrate was for
deoxidizing feed water for steam boilers. The "Stationary Engineers"
that did this sort of thing were, it seemed to me, a good test case
for this, as they didn't seem to be all that meticulous. One confused
the beer bottle he was carrying his deoxidant in with the one he was
drinking his Carlsberg out of. He not only didn't die; he didn't seem
to have any long term effects. There was another guy though, who
eventually did die, but only after what were said in the medical
report of years of habitual careless exposure.

Hydrazine (and UDMH and MMH) are often used in conjunction with N2O4
so they "get tarred with the same brush." You are not going to tell
propellant handlers "be really careful with this stuff but you don't
have to worry so quite as much about that stuff."

N2O4 is at least 10 times as toxic for prompt effects as hydrazine. It
scares the heck out of me, and I am a "rocket scientist". And everyone
knows we rocket scientists don't have good sense.

One thing I read said that persons exposed have this symptom and that
symptom and in a couple of days they get better. And, then in a couple
of more days, they die.

It is hard to find people in the rocket biz that have had long term
exposure to hydrazine that have not also be exposed to N2O4 so when
there are stories about long term effects, you don't know which to
blame. But I will take the alternative to "in a couple of more days,
they die." Better chronic than prompt.


I have heard all those scare stories, many times.(Probably told some,
too.) I was the program manager of some hydrazine thruster
development programs for the ISS at one time. The NASA world was split
between the hydrazine advocates and the O2/H2 advocates. There got to
be a bit of mud flying there, and I got my share.



(NASA couldn't decide between the options, or rather they did choose,
several times, but the kept switching back and forth. Finally, when
the Russians got involved, and were going to provide the propulsion
for free, I heard no objections to their use of UDMH/N204, even from
the same people that had objected t hydrazine as too toxic and too
contaminating. UDMH/N2O4 is much worse on both counts.)



Manzo Zeigler's "Rocket Fighter" describes C-stoff as
"thirty percent hydrazine hydrate solution in methyl alcohol"
and T-stoff as "forty-eight percent concentrated hydrogen
peroxide and a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds."


I have read that book, and everything I could find when I was
proposing "cuddly" propellants to NASA about 20 years ago.

Do not mix hydrocarbons with peroxide! Leave that to the terrorists
who intend to be human bombs, because you are likely to be one
intended or not.

I have no explanation of the many descriptions of Me163 explosions. I
don't think any of them sounded like they had to be "chemical yield"
explosions. I think that some may have been mechanical propellant tank
ruptures.

(In ordnance circles, I got into this thing of distinguishing between
"high order" explosions or "detonations and "low order" explosions or
deflagrations. Then there are "no yield" ones, like tank ruptures. I
use to rankle when people talked about auto gas tanks exploding, or
example. Then I read some dictionaries. The "sufficient" definition of
an "explosion" seems to be some event in which a noise was heard.)

One thing that was more hazardous on the Me163 than the exotic (for
then) propellants was the operational scenario. Take off, climb to
combat altitude, run out of propellant, glide to a landing spot, and
be stuck on the ground on the landing skids.

The allied pilots quickly figured that out, and that there was little
to be done about powered flight, so they just waited and followed them
down and nailed them on the ground. It is a wonder that anyone had any
stories about explosions, they should have all been killed.

My conclusion from trying to find out what happened was that the
Luffwaffe was totally negligent in keeping any useful accident reports
in the WW II era, at least that I found.


Some
brilliant and possibly pro-Ally designer placed extra fuel tanks
inside the cockpit.

A few years ago I listened to a lecture by a rocket engineer
who had known one of the Komet's engineers. When asked
about the Komet's lethality the German said "It did not kill
half its pilots! It killed no more than one in three!"



I like that story.

But, I don't consider it "evidence."


Designers are often told that "You have t listen to what the user
says, they were the ones that know what is going on.

I agree that you should listen. But you should evaluate what you hear.
Anyone's "eye witness account" is likely to be highly biased and
frequently just imaginary.

One of my "non rocket" interests armored warfare. (I had a slight
professional involvement, back in the knight errant days.) In WW II,
"as every school boy knows" (but I want evidence) German armor was
overwhelmingly superior to US armor.

And the US tankers would often tell you those stories themselves
(although all eye witness accounts are prone to flip back and forth
between "we were helpless" and "we got them all" modes.).

I found one detailed account of an independent tank battalion written
by the son of one of the unit members. It was largely based on the
stories the survivors said at reunions. Man, those guys had no chance
against German tanks. Period.

But, the account included a description of nearly every loss of US
tanks. Many, many times it is impossible to know just what the cause
of a loss was. You don't know if you were hit by an opposing tank, an
AT gun, or a passing asteroid. But, many of the losses did have known
causes. And in many cases it was not enemy tanks, for sure. Like the
guy that inadvertently drove his M-4 off a bridge and it sank in the
river.

Likewise, you don't always know if you really killed enemy tanks or
not. Over claiming is very frequent.

But, when I added it all up (which the author did not) these poor
guys, who were completely overmatched, lost only something like a
third of their tanks to German tanks. Yet, by their own count, they
destroyed more German tanks than they lost, to all causes. A kill
ratio of something like four in their own favor.

The Germans, OTOH seldom admit losing any tanks to anything at all.
Hey, something went with them.

Part of the explanation was the resupply situation. If the ash trays
in your M-4 filled up and you took it to Ordnance, they were likely to
say "Well, park it over there with the rest of the scrap and take one
of the backlog of unused ones parked over there."

The Germans (say post d-Day in Northern France) were not getting any
more tanks, so they weren't scraping any, no matter what. So, even if
the hull was in one village and the turret had been blown to the next
one, they still counted it as "being repaired" no matter that they had
no parts or equipment to do that.

The Germans were said to have about 1800 AFVs in northern France on
D-Day.

I have seen accounts that said that the RAF destroyed 1800 German AFVs
in the Falance pocket on the last day of the collapse.

I have also seen accounts that essentially buy the German version and
ascribe all the losses to "envelopment."

It is no wonder that people cite phenomenal kill ratios. Take your
pick.

On the Me163 I have seen a lot of German accounts of them
spontaneously exploding, but I don't recall one single one of a loss
to enemy action. There are many stories by the allies of blasting
Me163s on the ground, but of course, they wouldn't have known about
spontaneous explosions.

Another possible explanation is structural failure, or materials
compatibility problems.

I have never found a real explanation of how the Me163 worked, but it
had to be a pressure fed system. I have never seen or heard of a
peroxide pump. That means there were large pressurized tanks, which
probably were not all that conservatively designed. A bit of a bump on
landing and the tank pops, spraying residual propellant, peroxide or
alcohol/hydrazine about.

And, what were those tanks made of. There was only one material that
would be considered a "structural material that was available to the
Germans in WW II that was peroxide. Pure (and therefore dead soft)
aluminum. Well, that is not consistent with having a flying
pressurized tank, so the material was incompatible. Usually that means
that it sits around for a shorter or longer period of time, depending
on how incompatible the material is. Then the peroxide starts to
decompose a bit; temperature goes up a bit. Vicious circle ensues.
Boom. But that is not usually really "peroxide explosion" either.
Just a tank overpressure ("Not to worry, there was no nuclear yield".)

And, what were the seals and all the other bits made of. I was once
reading a report on the X-1 which was very like an American Lox Me163
and at about the same time. There was something about an explosion and
a fire. The report said they weren't sure what happened, but they
though it might have involved a seal. (I think maybe it was in a check
valve and lit off when the valve closure slammed on it.) They then
started to discuss what sort of special, proprietary LEATHER (!) the
seal was made of. I quit reading.

All I can say is, old war stories may be interesting. I have told a
few myself. But, one has to interpret them in light of other stuff,
like facts.



--Bill Thompson


Henry H.
  #40  
Old February 3rd 07, 11:43 PM posted to alt.binaries.pictures.aviation
Dave Kearton
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,453
Default Need help with a rocket motor ID - no more calls, we have our winner.

William R Thompson wrote:
"Dave Kearton" wrote:

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts - except for the retard on
sci.space.history who told me to do my own research. I think my
way was a lot more educational.


I'm guessing that you were answered by Oswald Mosley, a man
with nothing to say and no trouble proving it.



I think you've scored a direct hit with this one. Why anybody would
select the identity of a Facist as his screen presence escapes me...


"OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you need [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[ "






the AQM-37 can do up to Mach 3 or 4, depending on the version.
It's a target drone, and the article in your pictures is probably the
sustainer engine (the bigger thrust chamber must give it the initial
boost up to speed, but it would burn a lot of fuel). Propellants are
identified as liquid oxygen and kerosene. At least five thousand of
these drones have been manufactured since 1959. Even allowing
for the number that must have splashed into the oceans, it seems
likely that one of them could have landed in the Skylab Parking Lot.

--Bill Thompson




Unfortunately, the motor is still in the US. The current 'owner' is
quite happy with his purchase, and is fairly sure that it's legal - but
until he's totally sure, he wants to keep quiet about it.

Through the wonders of the Internet, we could assemble a quick think-tank
to sort it out. There has to be something to counterbalance the porn
and get rich quick schemes.


Once again, thanks to (almost) all who put their oar in.


--

Cheers

Dave Kearton


 




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