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Air Force & NASA Fire Off Green Rocket
coondoggie writes "NASA and the Air Force said today they had successfully launched a 9-ft. rocket 1,300 feet into the sky, powered by aluminum powder and water ice. This combination of fuel elements, referred to as ALICE, has the potential to replace some liquid or solid propellants. The technology is being developed at Purdue University and Pennsylvania State University. Aside from its environmental benefiits, ALICE has the advantage that it could be manufactured in far-away places, such as the moon or Mars, instead of being transported to distant horizons at great cost, researchers said."
If you could launch a rocket with pioneers and their supplies that would destroy the Earth, but ensure the survival of homo sapiens throughout the local galaxy, on multiple destination star systems, for the next million years, would that be OK?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Who cares so much if it's "green"? How many of these do we launch a year - that might be what maybe 1/100 of a minute of smog eminating from California? Now... if we can easily manufacture these off earth, THAT should be the headline, IMHO.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Save the environment while blowing up a chunk of it.
In what universe is powdered aluminum "greener" than a hydrogen/oxygen rocket? Even hydrazine burns to an inert end product if I remember my chemistry right (no guarantees there), aluminum is anything but inert.
I suspect that the rocket's first stage will have a Radium - Aluminum - Phosphorus based fuel (RAALPh) and will propel the ALICE stage to the moon. Straight to the moon. One of these days.
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Does this mean that we could send all the stuff we need to launch a rocket to the moon, assemble it there, then make the fuel and launch it from the moon? It seems to me that doing this would save quite a bit of fuel and allow us to go farther into space.
I was watching a TV show about this last year. I heard that you could repack Testor's engines. They used aluminum powder, potassium nitrate, and sulfur. I think that you are allowed to launch them up to 2000 ft.
...She goes off like a rocket!
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All this talk about this and that going "green" is just puff; no real meaning beyond getting PR and more funding.
I don't see how any rocket can be considered "green" considering most all of the environmental impact is not from firing the rocket, but is from building it.
Ending all wars and stabilizing human population would go far further towards safeguarding the environment than all these feel-good "green" initiatives.
Ron
Isn't it already taken?
OK. I want details. How fine does the aluminum powder have to be? Is it available commercially, or do I need to get out a grinder and a piece of bar stock? Do you need to powder your water ice to mix them together, or can you mix them while the water's liquid and then cool them while mixing, maybe in something like an ice cream maker? I guess the first question should have been, how stable is the stuff at room temperature? If it is stable at room temperature, what does it take to set it off - I mean, ignite it?
I don't exactly see anything to bust, but Adam and Jamie definitely should have a go with this stuff.
I wonder what flavor of water ice they used.
who would mix them up?
Yes, it's a clever acronym, and yes it's already taken, but context is everything here.
The real goal is being able to build it easily on other planets. Although I don't know what they're thinking when they mention the moon. We're yet to find ice on the moon. Hydrogen is exceedingly rare on the lunar surface.
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Ending all wars and stabilizing human population
Aren't those near diametrically opposite actions? Last time I checked, wars or plagues are some of the best checks on population growth.
Besides that, aluminum requires enormous amounts of electricity. I fail to see how aluminum fuel can be thought of as green considering the amount of coal that goes into our electrical grid.
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Apparently, not enough. The black death was but a blip. Real population control will require real intent to control population.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
All these gigantic federal government agencies commonly put on displays like this to look good in public and to make the next budget request go smoother. Truth is, any aerospace project run by the government costs so many resources that it's kind of irrelevent whether it's environmentally friendly or not. If you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something, your actions cause the labor of thousands of people, all of whom will burn up all kinds of resources to get the job done. It doesn't really matter what the resulting rocket burns - the pollution from all the machinery and coal power plants and pickup trucks and countless other things is far greater.
The government needs to do what private industry can't : research a cost effective vehicle for accessing space. Whether that be an elevator, a bank of lasers, a gigantic railgun, or a factory in Russia mass producing simple rockets, we need something drastically better than the current crap. Until something is done about the stupendous costs of rockets, it's pointless to even discuss trips to far off planets and other big manned expeditions.
Aluminum is common on the moon, and water may be abundant on Mars. So, we propel the moon into orbit around mars (or better yet, pull Mars into LEO), and... um... PROFIT!
Hmm... If you put too many rats in one container they resort to cannibalism despite being well fed. When I heard about that study someone mentioned that other studies were looking at whether this phenomenon could explain higher crime rates in cities. However, I'd never really thought of war (and resulting plague) as a major population control factor for humans. Perhaps humans seem inherently violent because we are still hardcoded to deal with hunter-gatherer level population densities. Thus modern society might trigger anti-over-population adaptations (evolutionary hold-overs) such as war. That would make space colonization very attractive... e.g. lower human population density and the resulting wastes of resources while retaining our ability to share knowledge.
Still going to be various nasty nitrogen compounds from the heat of the exhaust interacting with the atmosphere I bet.
Can I use this ALICE to build an inexpensive rocket myself?
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shh don't tell them the whole "green" movement is bullshit it'll kill their buzz.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I don't think the idea is to set up a coal burning plant off planet though.
Even coal buring is MUCH cleaner in a fixed plant where you can put in all kinds of heavy pollution control equipment though.
Pictures of water vapour coming out of the plant chimneys on a cold morning don't count!
Arguably the best way to prevent war and eliminate poverty would be to scatter billions of condoms from high flying aeroplanes throughout the third world.
Just a nitpick : "Al2O3 (silica) ". No. Silica is Silicium Dioxyde (SiO2). Al2O3 is alumina.
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And, of course, because it takes energy and resources to do things, the obvious green solution is to just stop that altogether.
Not really. The only proven effective method of stabilizing population is to give women the choice over whether to have children. Happily, this is also the Right Thing To Do. Sometimes the universe throws you a bone.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html
That sounded good and almost believable until the AL2O3 is Silica bit....
nAL is cheap to produce? - I doubt it - Aluminium in it's natural form is AL2O3 (there are other rare compounds but AL2O3 is the most common by several orders of magnitude) and must be first be refined (made pure - chuck out the junk) and then reduced - hence the requirement for energy - lots and lots of energy as aluminium is a great reduction agent.
nAL production is more a means of bypassing the metal stage and thus avoiding large crystals as a means to get to 'nano crystals'
check out http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090098365 for what is required to replace electrolysis.
electrolysis is simple and hugely scalable
nAL production not simple and difficult to scale
On a sub note - as soon as I see 'put production facilities on the moon or mars' I wince and put everything after that into spin doctoring filter - rarely does anything escape the filter cause it's basically bullshit for the masses
what is the chemical reaction? 3H2O + 2Al = Al2O3 + 6H ??
Ending all wars and stabilizing human population
Aren't those near diametrically opposite actions? Last time I checked, wars or plagues are some of the best checks on population growth.
Yeah, but last time I checked wiping out the human race wasn't part of the green movement's long term goals.
Not just that, but the fact that they build these rockets to be disposable is even worse. (and the Space Station...)
When the fuck will NASA stop being so god damn wasteful?!
I can come up with plenty of ways to save the Space Station, and i KNOW they will have as well.
Yet, 4 years after full completion, bye-bye.
The biggest aluminum smelters are located in Iceland, exactly because electricity is so cheap there thanks to the abundance of geothermal energy.
Relax. The Air Force is involved. It wouldn't go ahead if it was inefficient.
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Now they're just confused.
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And googled, and read all the comments, but I'm still in the dark as to how the thing actually works. Can anyone enlighten me?
Free Martian Whores!
They had used up the red, white, and blue rockets on July 4th, and the green one was left over.
"Spacecraft might one day refuel on the moon or Mars using plain old ice."
Isn't there not a lot of water on the moon and Mars? In fact isn't there not even a lot of hydrogen?
But then most children will be had by bored and/or irresponsible women -- which means: the lower class. You need one more step in your grand plan: turn fertility off by default, using a chemical in the water or whatever. Then offer free pills, to anybody who wants one, to turn it back on.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
In this case I think it means kids born downwind from the launch pad are not born with any more defects than the average unlike some other fuels that are very nasty but require a lot less energy to produce. However you are right, everything is being pushed as green or clean even if "clean coal" for instance means just a little bit "cleaner" than using current pollution controls.
It's true. A Hummer is going to spend so much of it's lifetime getting repaired that it's not going to be on the road much burning fuel.
A Hummer is just a status symbol, a bold statement that you are rich and so is your mechanic. Old East German quality combined with West German prices, a Mercedes in price and a Travant in substance.
To be serious a Prius is there to solve the problem of stop-start traffic. Take it out of that situation and you can find better things.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." :-)
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Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Old East German quality combined with West German prices, a Mercedes in price and a Travant in substance.
No no no. If it was really built like a Trabant, it would weigh less than one ton.
I thought they fired off an actual green rocket with green flame! No my nick was not inspired by this post.
Wow! Talk about transparent aluminum! You can see right through while it's burning in a big fiery ball. Look it sparkles!
... at first. But we're talking about getting this high up into the atmosphere where it could stay for years. It could even at some point alter the cloud formation and other weather conditions on the planet.
... well everything to go up (except for rocket fuel). Quick, buy some stock in ALCOA!
Yea, It's raining sapphire!
Oh GOD! RUN FOR THE HILLS! IT'S RAINING SAPPHIRES!
Isn't this similar to what caused a recent extinguished some significant life about 13,000 years ago? Didn't they discover a fine layer of microscopic diamond ash that was responsible for a lot animals, especially the Mammoths and people dieing in North America? Sure this was on a much larger scale and shorter timeframe. Isn't there some danger in seeding the atmosphere with microscopic aluminum particulate matter? Sure it's only going to be in small quantities
Although, it's not what I would call ac green solution. You should wee what it takes to produce aluminum powder. It's about 95% waste, 5% product. Of course, I exaggerate, but not by much. It's a horrible process to extract it from raw material. Which is why so many companies love recycling aluminum. It's hugely cheaper and cleaner to get aluminum from cans than from ore. Of course, now NASA's going to be taking all our aluminum cans, so you can expect the cost of
1,300 feet isn't very high (~400 meters if you prefer in SI units) - there are several taller buildings in the world, with the Burj Dubai being more than twice as high.
So these guys aren't exactly scraping the sky... they are going to need a lot more "umph" I think if they want to reach the Moon... :)
Bullshit. You're dead wrong, both statistically and morally. The only thing that's been proven effective has been affluence. Rich people don't have kids. Upper middle class people have 1.7 kids, give or take. However, the greens are big on bringing poverty to the world, which will make the problem much worse.
Oh it is, they just missed their chance at the Sydney Olympics when someone stopped them from putting the Sheva virus into the water filtration system.
Orwell was an optimist.
How ironic that, given your signature, you would advocate forcible medication of 'undesirables' because you don't like their moral behaviour. You want to stop the 'lower classes' from having children? Why not just call them 'degenerate races' and be done with it?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
turn fertility off by default, using a chemical in the water or whatever. Then offer free pills, to anybody who wants one, to turn it back on.
It is already the case, isn't it? No women (aside from myth) ever has made any offspring without taking a chemical known as sperms in the water or whatever known as semen. Best of all, those stuff are free and plentiful!
Just smelt it in Iceland, then, using their vast hydroelectric and geothermal resources and supporting their failing economy. ;-)
Ezekiel 23:20
1. Indeed I do NOT like the moral behavior of the lower class.
2. Your paraphrase of my post is dishonest -- particularly the word 'forcible'.
3. I don't want the lower class to cease having children. I do, however, want the lower class to stop having accidental children -- children that are not particularly wanted and not particularly affordable to their parents.
4. Your final sentence is an argument from intimidation, and not even a good one, given points 1, 2, and 3.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
We've got lots of H20. Besides H2 and O2 gas from our atmosphere are getting constantly blown off of our planet by solar winds (albeit small amounts) and nobody is complaining so far... ;^)
If you want to worry about anything, worry about the aluminum. We have much less of that...
Fearmongers unite!
I had thought it burned with a cool green flame.
Damn it.
Not often do you get a Tom Clancy reference around here.
...Purdue sure has been busy lately. GO BOILERS!!! Martin Jischke knew what he was doing with all that fund raising during his time there..
Plus, Iceland is so conveniently located to Australia's huge bauxite reserves ... oh wait -- ships use oil.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good