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Carmack Needs Rocket Fuel
Reality Master 101 writes "Saw an interesting post on the Experimental Rocket Propulsion Society BBS from John Carmack, who is working on an X-prize vehicle. Apparently he is having a lot of trouble getting Peroxide from the major suppliers, and is possibly thinking of helping someone set up a company to produce peroxide. With NASA's recent problems, there has been a lot of talk about promoting more private investment in rocketry. But how can it happen when the suppliers won't even sell peroxide to well financed, registered, X-prize teams? Anyone want to start a peroxide business?"
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Hydrogen peroxide can be used as a mono-propelant (A 70% pure mix run through a catalyst screen to form steam and O2), or a bi-propellant (mixed with a hydrocarbon to form steam and CO2). Check out erps.org for info on H2O2 rocketry.
Thank you for your time,
Frank Russo
This is the same stuff you can buy at the local drugstore in 3% dilute solution to disinfect wounds, bleach hair, etc. At very high concentration (I think for rockets they use 90+%), they can use a catalyst to initiate a very rapid exothermic decomposition of the H202 to H20 (as steam) and O2. This provides thrust, without need of a 2-part fuel/oxidizer combo.
I know of at least 2 outfits starting out with hydrogen peroxide rockets - Armadillo Aerospace (Carmack's outfit) and the infamous Rocket Guy (the toy inventor turned spaceman.)
Research into hydrogen peroxide rockets was done in during WWII, and actually made it into some experimental applications, I believe...
Or to be even more cynical, it violates something I consider to be one of Life's Universal Rules, which is this: You should never threaten to cost someone more money than it would cost them to have you killed.
For instance, suppose there's a market need for 20 commercial/military/ISS flights per year, and the government's willing to pay $500M per launch. That's $500M x 20 = $10B a year in pork to use the shuttle and our current unmanned vehicle capabilities. Against that, nobody is gonna build cheap launch capability, because it'll soon be a better business strategy to simply eliminate anyone who comes close.
For instance, suppose Armadillo Aerospace develops tech that enables them to launch a satellite for $1M. With reduced costs, there might be a market for 100 launches a year versus 20. NASA space scientists are elated, because they can finally send an army of cheap probes to every planet, comet, and moon that tickles their fancy. And geeks (myself included!) will rejoice because we can finally read about all the cool science while we're vacationing at the Space Hilton.
The big problem with this lovely picture is that as soon as Armadillo announces its $1M-to-orbit vehicle, $BIG_CONTRACTOR realizes that even if they buy Armadillo outright, the $10B/year gravy train (20 comm/spy satellites at $500M each) is gonna come up $9.9B short (20 comm/spysats, plus 80 space probes and Space Hilton modules, at $1M per launch). Someone will realize that you can hire a lot of assassins and saboteurs for $9.9B.
Congressmen, upon realizing that Armadillo's success will soon mean $9.9B less pork to distribute to their districts, will conclude that a major campaign contributor has discovered an "intriguing" solution to both their respective problems.
Both groups will publicly lament the "accident" at Armadillo that resulted in the flash-combustion of all personnel, and bemoan their sysadmins for the fact that all the offsite backup tapes containing design and technical data were unreadable, and use the "accident" to remind the voting and taxpaying public that space still isn't quite ready for private sector involvement.
I wish Carmack and anyone else trying to provide cheap access to space the best of luck, but I fear for anyone who comes close to achieving the dream.
When I worked for American Rocket Company in 1988-89, we used 80% Hydrogen Peroxide as fuel for our thrust vector control system. Sixteen injectors at the throat of the main engine nozzle under computer control squirted H2O2 into the plume and it deflected the plume, and therefore the thrust, by enough to steer a rocket.
This was really nasty stuff. IIRC, the only place we could get it was Germany, and we had to jump through all kinds of transportation safety hoops just to get it over here. 80% is a very high concentration, I don't know if Carmack needs this much or not. Peroxide you get at the drug store is 3% H2O2 and 97% H2O.
One of the test valves came back from our engine test site at Edwards and we rinsed it thoroughly with water. Still, when I handled it, traces of the peroxide burned my skin. Very nasty, very painful.
We also worked with other cool stuff like LOX (oxidizer), Silane (for ignition), and my favorite gas, Nitrous Oxide (another oxidizer, self-pressurizing and fun at parties!). I still have a hunk of polybutadiene rocket fuel on my desk as a souvenier; we used to cast that stuff into all kinds of fun shapes, including some you wouldn't be able to show your mother.
I can see the fnords!
Holy shit. I didn't see all these other posts with way better answers. My bad, sorry.
"Hi My name is John Carmack and I'd.....yes the same guy that worked on doom and quake.......yeah I'd like to order several thousand gallons of....yes those games are violent, lots of blowing stuff up.....anyhow I'd like to order several thousand gallons of highly explosive and caustic peroxide in order to...Hello? Hello? damn."
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Purdue University is doing lots of work with Peroxide based rockets. Armadillo should contact the Aero /Astro dept. there to get some tips on how to aquire the stuff. Just call the number on their web page.
I think they couldn't get stuff above 80% because of transportation concerns... I believe that they were able to distill the 80% stuff up to higher concentrations. They've also developed catalysts that can be mixed with the peroxide as a colloid to get better performance.
Purdue has just rehabilitated an Apollo-era test facility to do some engine tests. When they get up to full swing, they'll probably have the best facility at a University. Armadillo might want to contact them about using their facility for tests.
If the Armadillo guys have halfway decent designs, I'm sure the Purdue people would love an excuse to light up a new engine.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Interesting video about the effects of H202 on clothing. The leather shoe displays an amazing reaction in less thant 2 minutes Test Video
PEROXIDE FOR CARMACK! shouted the geeks, sometimes at their monitor, sometimes at their cat, sometimes at their lunch.
It was only the second time since the Karma-for-Guns campaign that Slashdot gained the attention of the public.
PEROXIDE FOR CARMACK! shouted the public, sometimes at their spouse, sometimes at the television, sometimes to the telemarketer.
And soon did legislators of the United States take up the cry, carrying the battle to the floor of the Congress itself.
PEROXIDE FOR CARMACK! shouted the legislators, sometimes at each other, sometimes at the TV cameras, sometimes at their aides.
And soon did the President of the United States take up the cry, carrying the fight to the United Nations General Assembly.
PEROXIDE FOR CARMACK! the president would shout, sometimes at France, sometimes at Germany, sometimes at the teleprompter.
And soon did the world take up the cry, rousing its collective might and pooling together a vast supply of peroxide which was soon delivered to the house of John Carmack. The only man who might have objected was Hans Blix, but the last anyone saw him, he was staring into the mirror, nodding his head slowly and sighing.
And so, one day, Carmack was driving John Romero back from the hair salon. His old friend was raving about this new catalyzing-gel they use. Romero then opened the door, and that's the last anyone saw him. They say the explosion was like "two hundred thousand quad-damaged rocket jumps."
I agree with some comments that this isn't exactly general interest news.
I am not interested in hearing from every chem major that is interested in starting a business (already heard from a couple, that's how I found out about the slashdot story). However, if anyone here does happen to have a brother-in-law that is a VP at FMC or some such, a little nudge wouldn't hurt.
The full story:
Rocket grade peroxide is stabilizer free, and 85% - 100% concentrated, as opposed to drug store peroxide at about 3% concentration. You can get up to 70% peroxide reasonably easily, but the high concentration stuff is a specialty item.
When we started our development work a bit over two years ago, we were doing some concentration of the peroxide ourselves, which is fine for making small test batches, but you really don't want to be making drums of the stuff, or you wind up spending as much time messing with that as you do building rockets.
We had some initial discussions with FMC about that time, but they weren't terribly encouraging. Shortly thereafter, we made contact with X-L Space Systems, a small company that was producing 98% concentration peroxide and selling it reasonably to several small outfits, as well as NASA and the USAF. I wound up buying a dozen or so drums from X-L, and everything was going well.
The owner of X-L was having such a hard time getting the government to pay their bills on time (he never had complaints about his small commercial customers) that he finally decided it just wasn't worth the headache, and he closed the company down. I was in discussion with him to make a large enough order to justify keeping production open, but we wouldn't need all that much peroxide for nearly eight months, so the storage logistics were looking troublesome. In hindsight, I should have worked something out, even if it was expensive or difficult.
About six months ago, we started contacting FMC again. The details haven't been very pleasant, largely because we keep thinking we are almost there, and it keeps not being the case. If they would just tell me exactly what I have to buy to make them happy, I would gladly do it, but they keep finding new things. That is the "stringing us along" part. They are mumbling again about lawyers and liability at the moment, which we thought had been worked through previously.
We have also spoken to Degussa about production, but they won't sell in drums, only large storage tanks (they supposedly have some drums in the US, but they are "promised to" NASA, and they won't sell them to us). We could live with that, but we broke off contact with them a while ago because FMC was sounding reasonable, but insisting that they be our sole supplier.
This is one of the unfortunate tradeoffs in modern society -- in the 70's, FMC would just ship drums of peroxide to the guys doing rocket powered dragsters without any hassles (one of them sent me a scan of some of his old shipping invoices). Today, fears of liability are larger than basic business drives like making money with your product. I'm not a "back in the good old days" sort, I fully recognize that the other advantages of modern society outweigh the nanny-state disadvantages, but one can always hope for across-the-board improvements.
Other than being almost out of peroxide, things are going very well for Armadillo. We rescheduled a lot of our development now that the X-Prize is fully funded, so we are parallel tracking full scale vehicle development with subscale flight testing.
John Carmack