The Best Performing (and most dangerous) Chemical Rocket Ever Tested: Rocketdyne Tripropellant
A deep dive into a legendary rocket engine test that took all the best elements of Kerbal Space Program, Portal and Doom. The Rocketdyne tripropellant engine, tested for NASA in the late 1960's may very well be the most dangerous chemical engine ever tested.
Patreon: / alexandertheok
3D animation by Artem Tatarchenko:
/ artem.iskustvo
Intro sequence inspired by:
• DARPA: Science is Fun ...
Sources:
www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/rzsbq4...
Playlist of all the public domain video sources used:
• Tripropellant - Sources
Channel showing videos of relevant reactions:
/ @fluorineisgreat
Source for the Rocketdyne VHS clips:
/ @dutchsteammachine
Tutorial I used to make the nice looking bar chart:
• BAR CHART ANIMATION IN...
00:00 Intro
01:46 Overview and Background
05:58 Reaction Chemistry
14:12 Engine Configuration
18:50 Testing
31:00 Environmental Impacts
36:14 Spaceflight Applications
41:54 Real Life Applications
50:30 Extremely '90s Outro
PhD chemist here. Whenever I find a mistake, I will write it into this comment. 7:15 You made a mistake saying that the reaciton between hydrogen and oxygen follows the formation of ions first. The reaction is in fact using a radical chain mechanism. 17:50 It doesn't decompose back into fluorine. It gets deprotonated, turning into F-, and then reacts with calcium to form CaF2, which is basically insoluble in the environment of the body. So basically, it pulls calcium out of everything that needs calcium, including your bones and the synapses of your nerves. That's why you treat a HF injury with calcium gluconate injections into the affected area. To give the fluoride something to attach to instead of, you know, the calcium you actually need. 32:40 You refer to the experiment being done at Aperture Science. This is in fact wrong. Tests like this were performed in the Black Mesa research facility. 33:20 At my old university, we would discard of pyrophoric old chemicals also by shooting them. We had a concrete block in the courtyard of the building, and hit them from a safe distance with a pellet rifle. Typical substances were things like tert-butyllithium. In small scales, this is actually pretty safe. 35:50 Regarding LiF's impact on the enviroment. It's likely that the fluoride will just precipitate as CaF2 once it hits water. The little bit of calcium dissolved in water, limescale for example, is enough to precipitate it. As to the lithium, it's basically harmless in small concentrations. 37:10 "A couple of drops to your skin might be fatal", is actually depicting it in a too harmless way. The chemist you're talking about was killed by it after less than 1 drop of it soaked through a protective glove. HgMe2 is one of the chemicals I will ever refuse to work with, and I've so far seen some weird dodgy shit already. 42:50 Uranium hexafluoride isn't gaseous at ambient conditions, it's a white solid. Those gas centrifuges operate under a partial vacuum at slightly elevated temperature. Tungsten hexafluoride is gaseous at ambient though. Additionally, UF6 usually isn't made using F2, instead, ClF3 is used. 49:20 Are you sure the radial cutting torches use thermite? My bet would be that they're a form of thermal lance, using oxygen gas and a metal. That concludes my list of mistakes found. Here's a few extra comments: 1. Your opinion about the square cube law showing up everywhere is the truest statement ever made. 2. I wonder if we could use the exhaust heat of an radioisotope generator, RTG, in a deep space mission to keep the lithium molten. Or, alternatively, use a lithium-sodium-potassium alloy to reduce the melting point. EDIT: Typo and correction from "glucamate" to "gluconate". That was an error caused by autocorrect I think. Or a brainfart of mine. Thanks for the correction anyway.
^ what he said On the last point, I don't think it was thermite but I was told it was a powdered metal and some other 'proprietary' material (suppliers were very secretive about the things).
Woah, this guy gave constructive criticism 😲 What a lad
I appreciate the half-life joke. Made me exhale
The cake is a lie
t-bu-Li my beloved
Fluorine: "Yo dawg, I heard you got electrons."
Your electrons. Hand em over.
fluorine is to electrons as the USA is to oil
ClF₃: yo dawg we heard you like burning things that already burned to ash so we explosively set fire to your ash and 10m of sand underneath it
chlorine trifluoride has a message for you... "man up your little.. btch!" ;)
@@JohnnyTromboner FOOF is where it's at. Dioxygen difluoride, if you're nasty.😇
When asbestos is one of the least alarming components of your setup, you've accomplished something truly amazing.
Airborne asbestos in small amounts is not a problem. Constant exposure over prolonged periods are.
Ugh. I work daily with asbestos. It's all over the world, in the year 2024. You breathe it when you're on the road every day, literally thousands of asbestos rod particles, 100% of which lodge deeply in your lung tissue. Yes, you. Yes, even in a blue state. Yes, even in a blue COUNTRY. You don't get asbestosis or mesothelioma unless you work or live with it daily. Compared to fluorine, it might as well be tea.
@andersjjensen sort of, but if you cannot expell asbestos from your lungs. One exposure, depending on parts per million level may or may not have lifelong consequences.
Terrifying, but amazing.
I can just see the project review meetings. NASA management: what the hell did you guys do? We could never use any of this! Rocketdyne engineers: well you said to make the engine with the highest ISP ever, you never said make the engine with highest ISP ever that DOESN’T kill everyone in a 5 mile radius
You said "Highest ISP", not "Highest ISP using something we could ever feasibly safely use. Suck it!"
The guy in the back who just got there: "Did you already tell them about the radioactive Dimethyl mercury engine?" NASA exec: "the *_W H A T."_*
@@Volvith NASA exec: _nonchalantly calls the FBI_
and besides, fusion engines are where it's at
@@diestormlie "you guys kinda suck at writing an RFP, skill issue"
I have a few personal rules I live by. As an Air Force program manager, my number one rule is "Never let an engineer get bored" Please dear god, if you work with or around engineers take this to heart. This video is the kind of stuff that happens when you let engineers get bored.
Considering some of the stories I've read of chemists making molecules which hate their own existence so much it requires special equipment to verify they were even there in the first place (let alone to quantify their properties)... yeah. Especially don't let rocket fuel scientists get bored.
And you must use the only real system. METRIC SYSTEM😉
They turn into WH40K Orks
*Enginner Gaming Intensifies*
I play certain games that have a similar concept: I either make something thats a decent size and works well, or i spend 20 minutes up to hours making a design thats marginally better, or just plain stupid for fun. The game in question: Factorio Marginally better example: 80% space efficient resource extraction vs 85%. Stupid: make an overcomplicated design that is just as productive as a normal one but looks fancy.
Dimethyl mercury? I momentarily lost my ability to control YT, accidentally closed the window and just sat there saying "wtf" for a minute. That infamous nightmare fuel poisoning case wasn't on the skin, it was through a latex glove.
I got hung up on that for days after I read about it. Just kept randomly remembering it and being like ‘yep, that was a real idea that someone actually had’.
That chapter in _Ignition!_ is even crazier than you'd expect: Some guy tries to convince the author that dimethyl mercury is only mildly toxic, & he actually gets as far as making inquiries to Eastman Kodak asking how much it would cost to buy a hundred pounds of the stuff -- the Kodak representative is horrified & declines, saying it would "fog every square inch of film in Rochester" (p. 177-178 in my copy)
@@nathansmith3608 Yeah, when he tried to place the order he heard a "horrified gasp" from the other end of the telephone line...which is the sort of reaction that indicates you should probably rethink whatever it is you're doing ;-)
@@MatthijsvanDuinand probably followed up with a compulsorily call the some government hotline ...
@@andytroo"Sorry sir, you've got the MK Ultra hotline, let me get you hooked up with the Assorted Neurotoxins/Fidel Castro Assassination hotline.
the issue of pumping molten lithium through a rocket in-flight is left as an exercise to the reader...
It's just an implementation issue!
Why not?
Molten Lithium has the habit of reacting with most things from steel pipes to junior test engineers! ;-)@@Steel0079
Skill issue.
no balls, DO IT!! NO BALLS!!!
That rap was so fire, it burned through 10 inches of steel reinforced concrete and then 6 feet of gravel.
It was a melt-down in the clubs at the time.
It gave me big _Rapping for Jesus_ vibes
I actually know of the accursed chemical of which yopu speak... the nazis were going to use it as a weapon, and chickened out
Knowledge!
If it were just a few years older it would've made the soundtrack of GTA: Vice City for sure.
I am currently pursing a chemistry degree while working as a part-time firefighter. This video seems to be designed entirely to scare me.
I couldn't imagine being called to a fire at this test facility . I imagine the call would be more of a "tell everyone in town to run!" Kind of call.
nope. i make donuts, and am scared shitless too.
@@texasslingleadsomtingwong8751A chemical fire. That is burning through concrete? Evacuate everyone and hope it goes out by itself I guess.
bro you dont sound like you love the subject really....chemists are excited about the processes.and possibilities ....and navigate the dangers, hell sometimes the dangers are the exciting part, at least it used to be
I would love to try making this engine. I know better so I never will, but it seems fun!
I think the PPE that was recommended in "Ignition" was a good pair of running shoes.
Running shoes and a rosary, in case you're not fast enough. If you're not religious, you will be if anything goes down.
I thought that was for the chlorine triflouride oxidizer that they spilled a ton of on a three foot thick concrete pad.
I'd reckon it was 'a safe rocket to get away from the dangerous one with'.
It was metal-fluorine fires. Good running shoes are the recommended PPE for metal-fluorine fires.
@@SnakebitSTI Yes. I first learned about that book from Derek Lowe's great "Things I won't work with" blog, specifically the entry about how to set sand on fire.
32:33 "The nuclear reactor, laser research facility, plutonium lab, and other experiments at Aperture Scien-uuuhhh I mean S.S.F.L." I'm rolling... XD
That (lol, first one) environmental video from Rocketdyne basically flickers right at the boundary of A-Sync .
SSFL was located pretty near where I live now. The number of locals who have no idea what it was is kind of shocking.
Wow you can be local to that and oblivious that in itself is terrifying have you seen how many test's they've done there and what they were testing I'm as far as you can get in the western world and I know where it is and how nasty that site is@@mbessey
The music in the intro sounds like something from the Portal games!
@@matthewcox7985Pretty sure it actually is!
I'm a military systems engineer, former infantryman, and parachutist & jumpmaster. Your comment about reduicng dangerous operations to tedium really hit home. Boring is often very *good* ...
Tedium->Excitement->Dead is the pipeline. Excitement is generally antithetical to human survivable circumstance.
I love the barely contained laughter as he's narrating. I kinda find it mind blowing that there were a group of folks that thought actually taking this concept from a thought experiment to building a test article was even a reasonable idea. Awesome video.
It took me about 5 takes to record the exploding barrels bit.
@@Alexander-the-okwhat boggles my mind is their ability to get it into the barrel in the first place if the introduction of that tiny of a hole will cause the barrel to explode.
Read ignition! By John Drury Clarke, it's the history of liquid rocket propellants. It a hysterical read in places and explains the "special" mindset of propellant chemists
@@badgers1975 : The "In the pipeline" blog by Derek Lowe is another must-read. At one point some still-active guys took a hammer to some stuff that just refused to explode. It seems to be the only stable chemical that has ever been found in it's "family"- if I remember correctly, exploding in reaction to light is common for it's cousins.
Note they were guys. Not averse to risk and fascinated with fire. One of the differences between the sexes. I think almost every teenaged boy goes through it. A desire to tickle the dragon a little.
TL;DR, a tube of unimaginable violence with a rocket nozzle on the end
fueled by substances you'd probably find in hell.
A controlled explosion, just like almost every rocket and internal combustion engine.
A VERY violent one too@@King_Flippy_Nips
I love that kind of description
"A Tube of Unimaginable Violence" will be stenciled on my coffin in large, block, OD Green letters...
The intro music was perfect. Mid-century super-science was fucking insane. "Welp, this can kill ya in 20 or 30 different, horrifying ways. Bound to give you at least 5 types of cancer just from staring at it. Really amazing specific impulse if you mix it with this other elements that is committing active warcrimes inside his heavily reinforced container as we speak. So anyway; we're going to need a few million liters of both in holding for our testing of this highly explosive rocket engine that's going to get us to Alpha Centaury within the next century by my calculations. I've got a 150,000 dollar grant which is basically one trillion in stupid iPad Kid money so we're just gonna smack these two things together right over there and see what happens. Gotta tell you, I sure do love the US of A!"
This might be the finest rant ever committed to a KZhead comment section. Bravo! 🫡
-- cave johnson
U-S-A! U-S-coughs up lung-A!
I do believe a nuclear powered rocket can attain a higher specific impulse than mere chemistry... But they couldn't figure out the plumbing for it back in the 1960s
@@Wise4HarvestTime I thought NERVA got to flight hardware?
Nothing could have possibly prepared me for that Rocketdyne safety rap
The description of the "burn pit" to the clip at 33:35 is amazing haha
"And today on Demolition Ranch, can a toxic waste barrel stop a .50cal?" LOL
Very _AMERICAN!_
Minor nitpick - the best ISP from flown LH2/LOX engines is actually the RL-10B-2, which gets 465s. However, the expander cycle that enables this performance is only really usable at small scale, and as such engines using it tend to be vacuum-optimized upper stage engines only. (Aerospace engineer here who's fascinated to see someone finally cover this - it's amazing how hard it is to find good info on this ludicrous tripropellant engine - I'm only a bit into the video so far, so I'll add other notes in this comment if I see them)
Huh looks like I forgot to read the bit in the script that specified that was for first stage engines. The diminishing returns when compared to expander cycle engines are mentioned towards the end of the video.
The video said first stage engines at 3:06
@germenschfighterlp458 So it does, though I missed that in the later quote of "taking the crown for the highest Isp of a flown engine" when introducing the RS-25. Also, I finished the video now and I really don't have any other notes, other than to say that this was excellent as always. Also, anyone with any interest in rockets should definitely read Ignition, as mentioned in the video. Some of the things they played around with were *wild*.
Ok...NERD! I'm sorry, couldn't help myself.😁
I live in Georgia And I keep treating to build a space ship to get away from my wife 😂❤
Im pretty sure all this stuff was carried out at their test site around Simi Valley, CA, USA. My dad grew up in the valley right under the test site, unknowingly exposed to a nuclear meltdown, chemical tests like these, and the joy of wondering "did the russians finally nuke us?" then waiting a few moments to thing "Nope, just another Rocketdyne test fire"
U r correct 🎉
When the meltdown occurred I was 2 months old and my family lived 1/2 mile from the reactor. Rocketdyne did not notify the residents nearby, there was no evacuation. My sweet grandmother died of stomach cancer from drinking the well water. We found out about the meltdown and other crimes 20 years later. I've had severe undiagnosable health problems most of my adult life, while Rocketdyne continues doing business! What a world we have made for each other!!
this whole video reads like a billy mays ad: "but wait, it gets WORSE!"
You are not fucking kidding holy crap, it really does just keep getting worse
Culminating with the Rocketdyne video
Absolutely on point. 😆
BUT WAIT! THERES MORE! MORE THREAT TO ORGANIC LIFE IN A 50 MILE RADIUS
Yeah Fluorine IS great, we used to use a molecule based on Fluorine (Perfluorates among others) to make skis slide faster and win more medals. The cancer you caught from the fumes in the tuning room was simply a feature. :)
PFAS are still used as lubricants now. They have switched to ones that bioaccumulate slightly less than the old ones They still never break down once they inevitably escape into the environment though
fumes is the last thing to worry about, a drop of it on your skin and it'll melt your bones.
@@tiavor I don't recall putting hydrofluoric acid on my skies, that's what you are talking about.
We use flourine, actually hydroflouric acid, to etch silicon for semiconductors. Not nice stuff.
@@tiavor That's hydroflouric acid. shudder!
You know it's cool when an asbestos cladding is the safest part.
I worked at Rocketdyne for several years starting in the mid 70's. There was some interesting stuff.
I’d love to hear your stories
Speaking of good performing (and dangerous) rocket engines, I would like to see an analyses video about the feasibility and performance of a hypothetical Nuclear Salt Water Rocket. I feel like it doesn't get the love it deserves.
The NSWR is the supercharged version of this. In the pro column it adds a whole 0 to the isp, in the con you can't use it in the magnetosphere because you'll add so many charged particles it'll knockout every satellite
@@SM0SS can't or shouldn't?
I think that the Love that Salt Water Fission rockets deserve is definitely Lunar Love. Yeah, that sounds Romantic. Especially a Far Side launch....
The problem with the NSWR is that it relies on the one weird trick of water being a basically incompressible fluid, forgetting that when you heat water to the desired temperatures it not only stops being a liquid, it stops even being water. If you ever actually tried to fire a NSWR engine, the result would either be a nuclear fizzle explosion that destroyed the engine, or a mildly radioactive steam rocket with an ISP equivalent to what Estes sells to children. The NSWR design also makes some very questionable assumptions about the behavior of neutrons. It's a cool idea, but the physics required don't come anywhere close to reality.
thrust measured in Chernobyls per second XD
can you imagine having to watch that music video at work with a straight face?
It's to motivate the employees into building something with which they can escape the planet.
when I see things like that video my brain pauses and has to take in the realization that yes that was approved and paid for by management. At a minimum a VP in HR signed off.
@@filanfyretracker Being someone who graduated high school in 1994, I can say stuff like that was far too common back then, and most of it was worse than that! D:
Extremely well put together video, glad the VHS upload got used for something. It is aggressively 90's. With youtube we can share our suffering with others.
Delighted to see you here! Thanks so much for uploading it, and all the other preservation work you’ve done over the years.
The SI versus English rant is redundant in an otherwise very good presentation. You apparently missed the fact that the prefix "kilo" is of Greek derivation and is simply defined as a quantity of a thousand; I digress. In the 50's and 60's, we Americans didn't know how to spell "SI system", let alone use it. Adjusted for inflation, we had trillions of dollars and not a few pounds invested in the English system throughout our economy. The existence of any instrumentation, machines or anything else built with the SI system in the USA, were essentially novelties or US Government property. Sans totalitarian control, it's impossible to flip any society and its economy from one system of measurement to another in a day, year, century or more.
@@joeschmuccatelli2167Australia changed its form of currency from pounds, shillings and pence to dollars and cents in 1966. Certainly didn’t take a century
@@cheeseguru1017 Changing your currency is an infantile pursuit versus changing your system of measurement. Ask any economist, engineer or physicist that is worth their salt.
UK went all out for the SI (metric) system in early 1970s. It’s perfect for technology it’s less useful for every day items. Pints gallons feet and inches are human based and relatable so we’ve ended with a hybrid system. It works.
Holy damn. Having a good chemistry knowledge as you started talking about the propellants involved I slid further and further into incredulity at how freaking *MENTAL* the concept is. Rocketdyne: "How can we make the most absurdly dangerous rocket engine ever?"
I just kept saying to myself, "well it's no Project Orion". Of course, if your rocket is being compared to Project Orion, you've probably veered off into mad rocket science somewhere along the way...
@@SnakebitSTI : Could be worse than Orion, could be Pluto. A nuclear-powered cruise-missile derived drone bomber that was postulated to be more deadly through it's own radiation emissions than the bombs it would have carried.
@@SnakebitSTI Project Orion isn't even that crazy when compared to some other things like "Nuclear Salt Water rockets"
@@absalomdraconis Yeah, but covering the planet with radioactive dust was the point of that mad engineering project. With Orion it was a side effect!
I want one! 🤤
LOL how about a fluorine water hybrid rocket instead?
LMAO I was searching to see if anyone had mentioned your attempt yet.
Imagine putting a Fluorine/water ‘preburner’ on that sodium/water rocket….
Well well look who it is, hey buddy
ah, I thought of your rocket the moment I saw this video xD
The Soviets played with metal rocket fuels, too. I don't know much about it. But a professor at uni told me he was part of the project and the probability of the propellant disassociating into ions after their initial reaction reduced the total output to uselessness. Or... so was my limited understanding.
Russians also built and ran liquid metal cooled reactors in at least one of their missile subs. It was a truly frightening machine. By the time you heard it on audio it could have surfaced and launched a half dozen nuclear cruise missiles on a carrier group and be accelerating away too fast for the carrier groups anti sub assets to do anything about. It could literally outrun anything on the ocean. Iirc the total out out of either one of its screws was greater than a modern seawolfs total output.
@@PandorasFollyliquid metal-cooled reactors are baby stuff in comparison, no heavy metals and neurotoxons are released for anyone to breathe, they're closed loops.
Didn't the Proton launcher also used very toxic compounds (although not metalic) ?
@@cdgonepotatoes4219yeah it wasn't incredibly toxic just neat. It used a lead bismuth cooling fluid. The line of liquid metal cooled reactor subs eventually produced the fastest subs ever made in the Alfa class interceptor subs. The design eventually of course was abandoned as it had a short lifespan for a reactor and would brick the reactor if the metal cooled too much. Something that happened multiple times
@robertspeedwagon982 Proton used nitrogen tetrixide and unsymetrical dimethyl hydrozene (aka udmh). These were mentioned at the beginning of this video, IIRC. They're nasty but they're not quite liquid fluorine nasty. Not even close. No, I did not remember these chemical names, I looked it up on Wikipedia, which has a lovely entry on the Proton family of rockets.
Regarding Isp, an honorable mention is the Gnom ICBM with 550 sec Isp at sea level and other air augmented rockets. Great show and many thanks for your work, Alexander.
Oh wow this is something I’d never heard of before. Seems quite similar to the meteor missile which is on the ‘maybe’ list for future videos.
@@Alexander-the-okwould love to hear you talk about more crazy rocket designs .
“Air augmented” means it’s not really a rocket engine in the traditional sense, since it’s getting reaction mass from the atmosphere. The meteor missile for example is a solid fueled ramjet.
My dad used to work for Bell systems and he would bring those monthly safety and instructional videos home and we would watch him and just fall over laughing, very similar to the clip at the end
Yayyyyy RS-25 discussion in the first 5 minutes
That is far from the last mention the RS-25 will get on this channel.
Make sure to tune into "Shuttle Sunday" later today on the NSF (Nasa Spaceflight) channel! 3pm EST I believe.
Fuckin love the RS-25 all my space nerd homies love the RS-25
These chemicals are not only highly reactive, they're also incredibly toxic. I know of three young people who have suffered from cancer who lived near the Rocketdyne research center in California. I know this is off topic but it's just as important. Seeing a child undergo chemotherapy is heartbreaking.
It’s definitely not off topic. The ‘environmental effects’ chapter of the video addresses some of the lasting effects.
@@Alexander-the-okit’s both surprising and not at all surprising that they did this so close to a population center. It’s a very 1950s vibe. Besides better cleanup and disposal efforts it would’ve made a lot more sense to have a big block of the Nevada desert like area 51 for this type of work so if there was contamination you could just have it be at 20 mile x 20 mile area where no one‘s ever allowed to live or 50 mile x 50 mile area lots of room in the desert I imagine they were more concerned about a commuting distance for aerospace workers, which of at the time was concentrated in southern California
@@mcamp9445They did just that for the Nuclear Rocket tests in the 60's. They had at least one case of "reactor rich exhaust" that made a large swath of Jackass Flats too hot for human entry for a good long while.
Good chance it was some much more mundane industrial chemical or heavy metal responsible, given these extremely reactive propellants don't last long before binding to something "in the wild". This was a time when carbon tet was just a good solvent for cleaning flux residue off electronics, PCBs were just a good oily dielectric for transformers, and cadmium was just a good metal to plate radio chassis with.
Consider that these chemicals badly want to react with anything they come in contact, and you are a big bag of water and chemicals. Honestly I'm surprised so many test engineers survived experiments like these.
You mentioned "awkward units"... We write formulas for colored glass in grams of coloring chemicals / 100 pounds of glass. Why? Because glass "batch" comes in 25lb bags, and good old Ohaus triple-beam balances came mostly in grams, especially if you shopped on the used lab equipment market.
You know it’s really hazardous when they knew it was hazardous in the 60s
Curious Marc recently published a video on AGC fly-by-wire ( they have access to actual hardware and are now retrieving the software from the memory). Multiple viewers sited your video on the topic in the comments. Your channel is about to blow up.
It blew up when that submersible also ‘blew up’. The video I made about that isn’t very good but it was popular. I had 200 subscribers before that. I’ve done in-depth engineering videos every few weeks since then and I’ll keep doing so for the foreseeable future because I thoroughly enjoy doing this!
Shes about to blow!
@@Alexander-the-okI believe the algorithm first suggested your video about fly by wire system first. Then I it later suggested some others and I backtracked to the on Ocean gate submersible. All were excellent videos...I enjoy a an hour long deep dive on a topics, including computer science and apparently engineering....
As someone who follows a bunch of retro computer related channels, I think the fly by wire one was the first video recommended to me as well.
@@Alexander-the-okthat sub video was the one that got me here and now i can't stop watching. Even though I'm a complete idiot whenever it comes to anything regarding engineering i can actually understand what you're saying and learn from it. Shows how good you are at explaining.
Immediate like for Portal music.
And another for "deadly neurotoxin" (if I could give another).
My chem prof @ SU in the '70's recounted a similar barrel shoot at Oak Ridge way back in the day. Copper was being rationed so they fiddled with sodium filled iron pipe as a potential substitute for heavy power buss bars. In the end the full barrels of sodium were rolled down a hill into a pond while being shot at in motion. He recounted it as the best fireworks he'd ever seen, esp. if done at night.
I'm amazed they got a functioning test with this combination of chemicals in use.
At 38:35, you mention it on top of a saturn v. But the image mentions a 260inch SRM with an SIVB. This was a proposed saturn 1B replacement vehicle, witht the first being replaced with a monolithic 260 inch wide SRB (which, fun fact, was tested, and was so massive that they didnt even bother removing it from the test stand and you can visit it today at the now abandoned rocketdyne dade facility)
Its nozzle was also blown off during the static fire.
So you’re about to be the next Scott Manley, I heard. Subbed. Loved the nitpicking about choice of units and improper mixing of imperial and SI.
I’m not completely sure but Scott Manley may have been where I first heard about this engine.
Engineers mix units that way when they're feeling frisky and want to have fun.
Improper mixing is hilariously confusing. I worked with some guys who ran a lab and used PSI and Celcius. It was infuriating.
51:30 I'm actually speechless... Those fonts, those colors. For that. Just.... fantastic. Even better than nineties sportswear. No, have to edit. That outtro beats it.
I used to do wireline in the oil fields. We used fluorine in our down hole chemical cutters. It was crazy. It would instantly cut a pipe as soon as we set it off. Leaving a smooth cut edge like it was cut with a water jet. Wild stuff. I believe the cutting head was made from beryllium. I could be wrong on that. In short, a small charge burned and pushed a piston in the tube with the fluorine mix into the cutting head and the head had a bunch of holes in a line around the heads midpoint. Basically making a chemical "saw" that burned through the pipe. A far cleaner option than a cutting charge, two shape charges facing each other causing the blast to shoot out radially and fairing the pipe out. Requiring milling to do more work. Only other option is plasma cutting. But a single use plasma cutter costs $40k, back in 2013. I am sure that price is much higher now. We could do a chemical cut for $20k for the whole job. A plasma cut would be $60-100k all said and done.
Hah, I posted this before the end. The ball option for triggering I think was usually a coil tubing thing. On the wireline side, it is electrically triggered. Sets off a burning charge in the top of the tool. Not sure if coil tubbing is used off shore. I guess the ball could be done with normal tool piping like you used for cutting and milling heads. I was always on land, so I know nothing about off shore specific things. I am surprised radial/plasma cutters are replacing chemical cutters. We mainly used the chemical cutters here in the US because they are cheap and effective. At least that was the case a decade ago.
It was about a decade ago here when the plasma cutters started to become more prevelant. Tbh, that cost difference would barely be a consideration here - that equates to about 12 hours of rig time and the plasma cutters were more reliable than chemical cutters for our use cases and easier to transport so easily paid foe themselves.
As soon as I saw the orange exhaust smoke in the intro sequence, I was like "Yep, that's gonna be toxic.". Edits post-video: As to the future of upper stage propellant systems, with the renewed interest in nuclear Thermal rockets (NTRs), NASA is looking at utilizing NTRs for Mars transport vehicles that use LH2 as the propellent. There are lots of studies that go into it, but there are several designs that see around 800-900s of ISP, twice that of thermal rockets, and all being a monoprop solution. As I was going through uni for aerospace engineering with a rocket propellent focus, I took a particular interest in magnetic nozzle designs for nuclear fusion rocket motors. There's a high probability if you look up a decent amount of research on pulsed magnetic nozzles, you'll read some research from some of my professors. Despite their complexities, fusion rockets have seen the potential of ISPs as high as 10,000s, while also being a part of a long-term habitation's power generation source. If we ever get the complexities of fusion figured out, I'm fairly certain that's the direction the industry will go.
Aside, GHS pictogram speedrun is now my new favourite thing.
Generally, higher temperatures does mean higher exhaust velocities, and therefore better isp. But, if burning the fuel stoichiometrically (and therefore, as hot as possible) increases the mass of the average exhaust molecule, it can be a net loss. This is why Hydrogen / Oxygen rocket engines run not just a bit fuel rich, but extremely fuel rich; more hydrogen = lighter exhaust = more isp. EDIT: This video is fantastic btw. Great work! EDIT 2: Oh look, you guessed exactly this as soon as I pressed play again.
The video is great I have heard about the tri-propellant engine and it’s soo much worse than I imagined by a few orders of magnitude
YOOOO THE INTRO FEATURES SCIENCE IS FUN OFF THE PORTAL 2 OST? I bet that’s what they were thinking when they made this. And as a KSP player, everyone who has played it can confirm the first meme😂
Honestly this really explains how Valve was inspired to create the character of Cave Johnson....rocket science in the 1960s was *wild*....
Spicy orange cloud in the intro means this video is going to be awesome! Mmmmmm
Vrooooooooooooooom. ! 😅
New Space Pope too.
I love the warm glow of Nitrogen Oxides in the morning....
My goodness, that safety video at the end almost killed me. I used to work with liters of HF for peptide synthesis/cleavage. We used KelF lines to pump the gas, and liquid nitrogen to liquify it. I never had an accident, but I saw two no-injury accidents. Both employees were immediately fired. It was safe enough, if, if, you didn't make any mistake. Turning the wrong valve caused liquid HF to drop to the aluminum jack-stand, eat through that, and onto the slate lab surface, and etch that, all in a flow hood. Good times! Thankfully, the synthetic chemistry is now much more benign.
So awesome. I've studied rocketry for over 40 years and was aware of the use of lithium because it burns at like 13,000 F, enough to burn through anything that exists and the rule boost to ISP but didn't recall this tripropellant. The safety video is great. Also I don't know if they still have it but in the 80s they had a minute man guidance system the entire top section of the missile at Xavier University in Cincinnati that I got to play with. It was something to see all these computer boards you can pull out of slots just like apc in a radial pattern around the nose. I guess I was expecting custom soldered boards and a compact system and not a huge amount of extra space that was just empty around the boards. Something you might research is The accidental generation of a negative resister in that system causing power surges that had to be damped. I wish I was aware of that rumor in 1984 so I could have studied those boards more. It was just like in a store room and nobody paid any attention to it. I don't recall which Minuteman series that one was that I got to play with
My next video is about the exact computer you are referring to - the D-17b. I’ve been desperately looking for someone that actually used one. I’m currently coding up a simulator for one. If you’re willing to share your experience with it, feel free to get in touch, I’m at enquiries@alex-hall.co.uk
@@Alexander-the-ok awesome! I'll send you an some info when I get a chance :)
28:41 Temperature doesn't measure velocity, but kinetic energy, which is related to the *square* of velocity. Reducing the temperature by a factor of 2/5, reduces the velocity by only the square root of that factor, or a bit under half. This becomes even less of a factor, once we consider that the main energy source is not the LH2/LF2, but the lithium added to its exhaust. (Speaking of: I do wonder what would happen if a second F2 injector were added past the lithium.)
"controlled metal fire" good luck!
After I regained consciousness following that closing rap, I gave the vid (minus the ending) a thumbs-up.
Years ago my group was the backup for a module the Ruzzians were supposed to be building. When we went to Florida for a site visit to see where to put our test equipment we went thru the hangar where everything was to be put together for launch. The scariest part of the briefing was what to do if the sirens went off if there was a fuel spill. Look for the wind sock and run upwind FAST. If evacuation was in one direction it was into a swampy area. They told us don’t worry about the alligators, it’s worse having the fuel get on us.
I love the portal references Edit: I just got to the end. That outro video. Whaaat
Yeah it was definitely a product of the early 1990s. That and the whole push for banning CFCs to stop the hole in the atmosphere. I vaguely remember growing up as a kid hearing all about this in cartoons and other parts of popular culture. These days people could really care less about the environment and recycling. It's soo corny, and yet it has that 90s spirit of "we can do this" or something like that....
@@alexdhallSomething that aged especially well is the idea of refilling toner cartridges...
I just finished reading Ignition and was curious for more detail on the fluorine rocket tests. Your recreation of the test stand adds some amazing context. Really well done. I recall Clark saying something like there are outside odds that CFl3 might be an oxidizer for the future. Your video adds nuance to that speculation. You not only did justice to the primary sources but even expanded and enriched them. Great work!
There's no damned way the Environmental Protection Agency is going to let anyone fly halogen-based oxidizer. If the rocket blows up during launch - which can happen - you wind up blanketing Kennedy Space Center or Vandenburg Space Force Base with one of the most hazardous chemicals in existence. If you DON'T blow up during launch, you pump tons of HF and HCl into the atmosphere.
i just gotta say, starting this video with "Science is Fun" from the Portal 2 soundtrack was a stroke of genius.
Great video! In the 1980s I worked at the Prototype Fast Reactor at Dounreay in northern Scotland. It was cooled by liquid sodium (another alkali metal). We used electrically trace heated pipes and vessels to keep the sodium molten, and argon cover gas to keep out oxygen. To stop the system clogging up with oxides from accumulated oxygen impurities, part of the sodium was circulated through a 'cold trap', where the sodium was regeneratively cooled and passed through a stainless steel basket, where sodium oxide precipitated. This kept oxide levels low and (importantly) kept the sodium freezing point close to its nominal 100 degrees C (or so). Anyway, great video, very enjoyable. See also John D Clark's book 'Ignition!', which is a great history of some wacky rocket fuel options that were investigated in the 50s and 60s.
lmao i just by accident own the "ignition" book. I got a few pages in before stopping but might pick it up when i have time after this!
It’s definitely worth at least skimming through. I’d never really thought much about how propellants were developed before I read it.
The part where he talks about chlorine trifluride is especialy interesting. One of the things about the book that I find great is the way it puts the research and materials in context. The casualness that some quite nasty materials are covered and how that contrasts to how he talkes about some extremely nasty materials.
Absolutely do, it's insane.
There's a download of this book at library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf
They have footage video of the "small" liquid fluorine leak and pictures of the large explosion aftermath at the testing grounds a 15 foot thick slab of reinforced metallic groute yeah the Apollo launch pad material ,(also used to hard block drag engines fyi) melted a hole through to bedrock 30feet past it and the associated support vehicles 50 feet away were almost in a pool because the heat melted them flat and oxidized the rubber and glass off them, because storage was next to the electric fork lift charger. The engine was used for a booster in a thermonuclear icbm they made a handful and cancelled the project. And if you are like wait this is before wire edm and and iscar silicon carbide ceramic tooling used to mill satellite and inconel. You are correct. That's because they used manually controlled 100k psi water jet that used 100% Hydrogen peroxide in a form of chemical milling.
They used hydrogen peroxide as a water cutting fluid. I guess that's better than somehow using FOOF, or Clorine Trifloride as a cutting fluid, but still...
Very fascinating information. It chimes with me because i lived at the other end of simi for a few years up to 2000, and have driven past the rocketdyne facility a few times. I had heard that end of town was polluted by the facility but didnt know anything about the nuclear horrors of the pit burnings of nuclear waste or this guided toxic waste projectile untill long after i left. You occasionally heard what seemed to be a low flying jet aircraft roaring but neither getting closer or going away. One day i was driving down the freeway and heard the same , and saw a tall narrow jet of smoke rising into the sky from the far side of the valley. It turned out they tested the shuttle boosters there, occasionally. I also liked the safety video. It reminded me of an occasion when we were having a total company meeting to cover some of the problems, and some higher up had come across to explain what was going on. We were all sat in rows with baited breath , and then the bosses ( 4) all strode in line from the back up to the front spread out in a line with their backs to us. Then they suddenly donned hats and started singing a modified version of YMCA while dancing around a la village people. I remember clearly to this day , the guy behind me muttering " oh God....we are doomed". For context the facility was called the AMC, so they sere singing Y(why) AMC. All a bit contrived, but thats management for you
this is so far one of the best videos I've ever seen, truly amazing stuff you presented here
Why would they bother talking about safety? If you care in the slightest about safety you would have booked a flight out of the country before finishing the report's abstract.
Pulled me from across the house when I heard "mixed with florine". No, thought I. Surely he said chlorine. He must have said chlorine. What kind of MADMAN would....Oh. Rocket scientists in the sixties. MMMyep. Sounds about right. With hydrogen. Mmmyep. That would track. We're talking about the same fellas who turned a manhole cover into the fastest projectile ever fired with a mininuke underground in a long barrel...err..tunnel.
The nuclear manhole cover is one of those urban legends that just won't die. But the reality is, if you calculate the energy that would have to be transferred to the steel plate to accelerate it to the claimed speed, it is a bunch of orders of magnitude more energy than the energy it would take to just vaporize the plate. And because that energy would be coming from a shockwave moving many times faster than the speed of sound in steel, there would be no possibility of gradually accelerating the steel plate the way a bullet is accelerated in a gun. The front 1/4 of the plate would still be stationary and normal looking while the back 3/4 was already plasma.
@@faroncobb6040the manhole cover DID get accelerated though, there’s proof on video which is the reason they discovered it got accelerated to escape velocity.
yeah one frame of footage though right? @@eh___1449
@obb6040 Since we'll never know for sure whether the manhole cover was actually vaporized along with the concrete or not, I most definitely prefer the version in which we, as a nation said 'hold my beer. Watch THIS!!". So on that balmy day in 1957 we yeeted the first ACTUAL thing into space at six times the escape velocity of earth at an estimated 67 Km/sec. A speed I do not expect to be matched until/unless we can perfect & place orbital railgun systems someday.
@@faroncobb6040 SO maybe. just MAYBE not so much the urban legend as you'd been led to believe. ;)
Man, I love science and engineering like this. Just some insanely talented people getting together to see what they can actually get done!
Wow. Thank you, that was a really really good video on some really bonkers experiments... I think I'm out of WTFs for the rest of the week, and it's just monday.
25:57 it took me until here to realise the test firing footage isnt actually filmed footage but CGI. Nice work.
I honestly didn't realize it was an animation at first. Top tier!
The SRE used liquid sodium as a coolant. NaK was used in the fuel rods as a thermal bonding material- something that is sometimes still done today. The problem was with the material used to cool the sodium pumps- a liquid hydrocarbon known as tetralin. A crack in one of the pumps caused tetralin to enter the sodium loop and break down, causing carbon to plug up some of the cooling channels, resulting in the subsequent partial meltdown. NaK was subsequently used as the pump coolant after the reactor was repaired.
So glad I finally got around to watching the whole video, great stuff!
thx for the polaroid. :x what a beauty. i remember it well and still own some pics from me as a kid. playing with rockets! :D
Babe wake up new Alexander the OK video just dropped
You need some of these: , . " ; :
Wow, I've never seen that comment before
Ive been binging your videos since i just found your channel 👍 really interesting stuff and i really appreciate you citing your sources, makes following along more interesting
Another excellent video as always. Thank you for putting these together.
No problem, glad you enjoyed it!
this channel adding the link to the Index DARPA video just made my brain reboot, that is a crossover i was not expecting
This is the funniest name I’ve come across on KZhead!! Very very funny and clever!
This is a very high effort video. This is a very enjoyable and appreciable watch. Thank you!
Awsome job of research and investigation into the topic.
Holy Crap. Everything about this whole rocket system wants to murder you
Considering that rockets are just huge bombs that explodes in barely controlled fashion, discarding this engine as too dangerous is really scary
It'a not engineering without a full hazard bingo
"That's right, we're going to build a rocket with a controlled metal fire. I already hate that sentence." LMAO! Was not expecting to fully laugh out loud at this video. 🤣🤣🤣
That... *abomination* at the end. Whoa.
this is my favorite rocket propellant, because it makes any chemist i meet recoil in horror when i tell them what it is
First time on this channel. Oh boy, soooo much content to digest, it’s gonna be marvelous. So, in advance, thx Alexander, seeing this one video convinces me that my time will be well spent here 😍
Another incredible video, all your videos especially those on rocketry are amazing!
Very well done and a fascinating topic.
Thank you for the Rocketdyne VHS clips playlist
As a retired chemical engineer, who helped design a plant to convert fluorine gas into the latest generation of automobile refrigerants, know that once reacted with the right other elements, the resulting product is very safe, and very useful both to us and the environment. That said, the equipment and process is one of the most complicated I had ever worked on and safety in many aspects was part of every process design decision. The plant is running today, and makes in excess of 15000 tons a year of refrigerant.
It's reassuring to know that safety was taken seriously. Doing a full risk analysis can be mind numbing, but it is absolutely critical.
I love the sneaky Portal reference
This is by far my new favorite channel. What I would have given to work for Aerojet Rocketdyne at the Santa Susanna Filed Laboratory.
I just KNEW I'd find Ignition! in the sources list. :)
And it is downloadable at library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf
Such a well done video. Great Job. Found your channel for the first time with this. Looking forward to checking out the rest. That outcome though... What a laugh
First video of yours I've seen and am really impressed had me hooked the entire time. Subbed and looking forward to your future videos, especially about Polaroid
One of the things lots of people forget when it comes to rockets is that a 10% increase in thrust at liftoff could actually double your acceleration. Most rockets have a 1.1-1.3 to 1 thrust to weight ration which means at 1.1, about 90% of the thrust is being wasted just to cancel out gravity, only the last about 10% is actually changing the rocket’s velocity. So increasing it to 1.2 to 1 means it will leave the launch pad twice as fast.
absolute banger of a video, subscribed.
There was a very large tank of liquid fluorine up on the hill near us that was used in the late 70's and 80s for laser testing by TRW. Long after the tests ended that tank sat on the hill and nobody wanted to touch it. Finally during a safety review of what would happen if it burst and that liquid ran down the hill towards the town, TRW agreed to dispose of it. I made sure to leave the area for a few days while the pumped it out and transported it somewhere.
34:56 I think the reason this disposal policy survived till '94 is that the train of thought behind it combined the elements "the suits didn't specify how to dispose of it", "hold my beer and watch the fireworks", and "what the suits don't know won't hurt them".
I loved the knowledge edit at the very end. Here in my garage!
Thanks for giving me the motivation to read ignition which has been on my shelf for a while. Definitely a good book that I should have gotten around to reading earlier.