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."

Comments

Re:Ethical question

[martas]

right, because aluminium is in such short supply, and the survival of the human race on earth depends on it.

Re:Ethical question

[iroll]

Not for a million years, no. Pretty sure the Earth is capable of that. Come back when you've got nine nine's probability of success on 10 billion years, and we'll talk =)

Green... eh - manufacture on off planet ... cool!

[religious freak]

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.

Aluminum powder is green?

[snarkasaurus]

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.

Re:Aluminum powder is green?

[wvmarle]

It is easier to produce and easier to store: no need for high-pressure supercooled storage as needed for H2 and O2 storage. Besides, pure O2 is a very dangerous material to handle, which is why in most labs O2 cylinders are at relative low pressure. A leak can cause a fire: grease can combust spontaneously when in contact with pure O2. So handling H2 and O2 costs a lot of effort and energy. That makes them expensive as well. And in general: higher total cost means more resources used and that is always bad for the environment.

Hydrazine is also a very bad poison. Maybe not when it is burnt completely - but 100% combustion is always hard to reach, and I'm too lazy to look up the combustion of hydrazine now. And again it is a real danger in the handling stage. Or when a rocket were to explode upon launch, that is also still a real issue.

Many other solid propellants are either poisonous themselves, or have bad combustion products. Commonly used propellants are very expensive too.

This nAl-H2O (nAl = nano-Aluminium) product is very interesting as the combustion products are Al2O3 (silica) and H2. In the solid state it is also safe, you can probably eat it without adverse health effects. No nutritional values though, the Al particles likely pass unchanged.

And it has other interesting applications as well: nAl-H2O can be stored safely and easily long term, not much risk of leaks as it is a toothpaste-like substance at room temperature. If you were to bring pure nAl particles on e.g. a submarine you can use the reaction with sea water to propel your submarine with the heat of the reaction directly or with the H2 that is produced.

And finally nAl is relatively cheap to produce and Al is plentiful on this planet, water of course also doesn't cost much, and as such it can be a really cheap alternative to current fuels. Production of Al from ore takes a lot of electricity as it is an electrolysis process, which is an environmental issue, though this can be solved by using water, wind or even solar power.

Re:Aluminum powder is green?

[Jarjarthejedi]

Free Aluminum is non-inert (that's kind of the entire point of a rocket which uses free aluminum as one of its fuels). Aluminum bound to oxygen (like that which is found in water ice, aluminum's bond is more powerful that hydrogen), on the other hand, can be (depending on formula of course) one of the strongest bonds in the natural world. Bauxite (AL2O3) is very inert compared to most other compounds.

Just because one of the chemicals involved is non-inert doesn't mean the product will be non-inert. Chemistry 101 and the existence of Salt teaches that.

Re:Aluminum powder is green?

[damburger]

Side note re hydrazine; 100% combustion is not only impossible it is undesirable for rockets. Most are run a little fuel rich so that there are unburned and partially burned molecules in the exhaust which are lighter than the oxides you would get from complete combustion, and thus for the same energy give slightly higher exhaust velocity.

Hydrazine pollution is a big part of why the Russians are planning to dump Proton for Angara; on the face of it a foolish decision because Proton is cheap, reliable, and almost as capable as the basic Angara designs in terms of payload and orbit. The rationale is that a significant of the cost of a Proton launch is cleaning up the chemical residues it spurts across Kazahkstan.

Re:Aluminum powder is green?

[lxs]

When has green not meant better?

When describing your great aunt's complexion after eating the funny tasting crab salad.

Re:Aluminum powder is green?

[snarkasaurus]

I have an O2 cylinder in my garage that runs 3000psi when full. Welding gas, y'know. Every mechanic's shop has one. Hydrogen is also used as a welding gas, it is commonly stored and shipped in the same truck as the O2 cylinders. Along with propane, acetalene, MAP gas, etc.

Aluminum is -very- expensive to produce compared to liquefied gas. Its refined from bauxite by electrolysis. They put the Al refineries next to hydroelectric dams instead of next to the bauxite mine, that should tell you something eh?

Not saying it couldn't work nicely as a propellant for use on the moon or asteroids, where water ice and recoverable aluminum could be found. Thermite could too. Just saying calling it green is tripe.

Although I have to say, the thought of refining pure aluminum on the moon is PURE science fiction. Electrolysis of molten rock, hard to do in a space suit with a refiner unit hauled up from Earth, right? Electrolysis of the ice for use as a hydrogen/oxygen rocket would be easier, yes? Solar panel, couple plastic bags and a compressor pump.

To the Moon

[bobdotorg]

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.

Re:To the Moon

[Nefarious Wheel]

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.

Oh. Mod points gone. Oh my ribs...

Re:To the Moon

[moosesocks]

Well, the radium and phosphorus would certainly ensure that the rocket stays "green" (even in the dark)

Re:To the Moon

[damburger]

As would much of the wildlife in the range

Re:Hm...

[MichaelSmith]

It would be easier if water could be found on the moon.

Re:Ethical question

[reilwin]

What if this happened in your lifetime...and you're not part of the crew?

No Rocket is Green - Building It Is What Pollutes

[Ron Bennett]

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

Re:Ethical question

[pushing-robot]

aluminium

Oh dear lord, not this again.

• The discoverer (Sir Humphry Davy) spelled it Aluminum.
• Aluminum saves a syllable.
• NASA, the subject of this article, spells it Aluminum.
• IUPAC accepts the spelling Aluminum.
• A-loo-mi-num has such a nice... woody quality about it, while Al-yoo-min-i-um is a nasty tinny sort of thing.

... Q.E.D.

Re:Green... eh - manufacture on off planet ... coo

[Rei]

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.

Re:Ethical question

[martas]

I'm the founder of a world-wide organization whose aim it is to execute every person to have ever used the "aluminum" spelling. I'm very serious about this. You should be, too.

Pure government waste and PR

[ShooterNeo]

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.

Re:No Rocket is Green - Building It Is What Pollut

[damburger]

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.

seen something similar to this before

[tekgeek]

http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html

Re:Ethical question

[SlashWombat]

I agree ... its only the Yanks that think aluminum is a reasonable way to spell
it. Every other element they spell correctly.

Next, lets pick on the yanks for avoiding metric measurements ...

Re:Ethical question

[AliasMarlowe]

I grant that Davy omitted the second i, but people like regularity - especially in regular structures like the Periodic Table. The extra letter has been added, so far as it has, by popular demand,

But not for Molybdenum or Tantalum, curiously...

Re:Ethical question

[qmaqdk]

Ok, then let's be consistent:

Helum, Lithum, Beryllum, Sodum, Magnesum, Aluminum, Potassum, Calcum, Scandum, Titanum, Vanadum, Chromum, Gallum, Germanum, Selenum, Rubidum, Strontum, Yttrum, Zirconum, ah, who needs more than 40 protons.

Re:Hm...

[CrimsonAvenger]

Wouldn't conservation of energy still apply? You'd expend all the energy needed to lift the mass of "one standard rocket ship" out of Earth, land it on the moon, then expend even more energy getting it off the surface of the moon. How is that better than lifting "one standard rocket ship" directly off the Earth? (Yes, I admit there might be scale effects where we don't have a large efficient rocket capable of lifting said mass in one go.)

You build one "standard rocket" on Earth, which is capable of going to the moon.

You fill it with fuel, and send it off to the moon. It arrives with empty tanks.

Now, at this point, you have one "standard rocket" sans fuel, sitting on the moon. The rocket had to have had around 15 km/sec deltaV when it started, which was just about enough to go to the moon and land there.

You refuel it from fuel made on the moon. Now you have a rocket with 15 km/sec deltaV sitting on the moon.

Hmm, how far can you go with that...tough one. Allow for 5 km/sec to be blown on the landing wherever we're going to land. It probably won't be that much, since we'll probably use aerobraking to some extent, but let's be generous. 10 km/sec left.

We launch from the moon, on an orbit that'll pass within 500 km of the Earth's surface, where we'll make a second burn to send us outbound....

The rocket leaves the vicinity of Earth at somewhat more than solar escape speed.

In other words, such a "standard rocket", if refueled on the moon from fuel made on the moon, and relaunched, can go basically anywhere in the Solar System. It can do it relatively quickly (relative to what we can currently launch - we're not talking hundreds of km/sec here). Jupiter in a year, Mars in a few weeks, that sort of thing....