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NASA Wants Green Rocket Fuel
coondoggie writes "NASA is looking for technology that could offer green rocket fuel alternatives to the highly toxic fuel hydrazine used to fire up most rockets today. According to NASA: 'Hydrazine is an efficient and ubiquitous propellant that can be stored for long periods of time, but is also highly corrosive and toxic.' It is used extensively on commercial and defense department satellites as well as for NASA science and exploration missions."
NASA is wasting time and money on this crap?
A little food coloring should fix that. I should see if I can get a grant.
Everybody should read one book about rocket propellants: Ignition! by John D. Clark. Apart from it being a good (and hilarious at times) read, it'll also show you why this project will most likely end up being a waste of money.
But when it burns it doesn't create any green house gasses. since it contains nothing but nitrogen and hydrogen. Its also naturally occurring, so it can't be that bad can it?
Green fuel.. I mean seriously, who came up with that term anyway? I had a good laugh when i saw the headline. I laughed till the tears would not come anymore.
The laugh is over now and I'm irritated with the way people use "green" insteadt of "environmentally friendly" for in the end, that is really what you want to say!
The environment is anything but green! From space, even the planet looks blue! The Earth itself looks brown, but that's all beside the point. The point is if you mean something, say it! Don't say what you don't mean and expect people to believe you're really serious about being understood.
Geekism is your _only_ God!
Nitrous oxide fuel blend is a mixed mono propellent that's non-toxic and has 320-340s ISP. Max Vozoff, formerly of SpaceX, talks about NOFB in this episode of The Space Show. He think's it's a game changer.
I guess if I was one of the technical crew who had to work with this stuff and be exposed to its toxicity, I'd be welcoming my boss researching a way of making my life safer. I'm sure the technicians love working for NASA but given the choice between working with highly toxic fuels that might burn them/ give them cancer/ other nice side effect, or something less damaging, I am sure they'd be all in favour of an option that won't harm them and won't potentially leak into local water tables, get drawn up into local water supply / agriculture and end up in their kids.
My experience is the people most likely to moan about health and safety are those whose greatest risk of an industrial injury is stabbing themselves with the office stapler. Folk working in genuinely high risk environments seem quite grateful their bosses have to abide by regulations.
It's already fueling rocket cars
http://youtu.be/i-hXcRtbj1Y
Put a politician in the engine and set him to Campaign and he will spew a continuous stream of rhetoric that will slowly accelerate the ship to near light speed.
I don't know if you've ever tried to obtain Halon lately but you'll find even if your system is still grandfathered it's nigh on impossible to get hold of, they've pretty much stopped making it. It's the same with the CFC's used by the shuttle's foam, being allowed to make it didn't mean the raw components are easy to come by. If they'd wanted to continue using CFCs they'd have to had to pay for a supply line to be available and maintained, whether they needed a lot or a little. The problem wasn't that they went green, the problem was that the alternative they chose wasn't the right one and they didn't want to invest the time and money working around that properly.
Going Green is probably just an excuse here, it's the money. Because it's toxic and corrosive it's hard to handle and thus expensive to handle. First you have the expensive equipment and protective gear, and then we have the paperwork... Think about it this way, every time you use the stuff you're generating reams and reams of risk assessments and paperwork. That paperwork is essentially a writeonly document which has to be produced everytime they come up with a slightly different way to do things.
I hear freshly clubbed baby seals make excellent rocket fuel.
Or LOX and liquid hydrogen.
Really really stupidly.
NASA Wants Green Rocket Fuel
I hope they don't mean Soylent Green rocket fuel. Sometimes these environmentalists go too far.
If NASA wants their rocket fuel to be green, all they have to do is add a whole lot of green food dye to the tanks before filling them!
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
if the last U.S Shuttle was dismantled recently by the Obama's goverment then what's the next?
How about this one?
Additionally, not everything launched is a manned vehicle. Those satellites have to get up there somehow too.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
This reminds me of them REMOVING asbestos from the space shuttle. They replaced it with something else less effective... and who knows... maybe the challenger wouldn't have blown up if they had just left the shuttle as designed rather then making it more environmentally friendly.
In any case, if we start launching a LOT of rockets then I'll worry about this but given the piddly number of rockets we launch every year this is a non-issue when compared to the much bigger problem of it still costing waaay too much to launch things into orbit. And this environmental complaint is only going to make those costs go up instead of DOWN which is the only direction that is acceptable.
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St Patrick's Day is only about a month away
So they better hurry up if they want it done by then...
Green is a buzzword. It has traction. It shows "they care".
When your totally out of ideas you start a buzzword blitz. In other words, find the guys who came up with this at NASA and show them the door. They obviously have nothing better to do.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
When I was at school, one of the exam questions in S level chemistry was to estimate the maximum temperature reached if a stream of hydrazine hydrate was mixed with a stream of concentrated hydrogen peroxide. Of course, after the exam we had to try it... two carefully aimed pipettes over the centre of the biggest Belfast sink in the lab, three quarters full of cold water. I'm not disclosing how we released the liquids safely. If you can work it out, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know here. There was a white glow at the centre. I guess nowadays with the fear of terrorists no school exam would dare ask the question, whereas in those days I suspect the exam setter thought "Well, if they've done the work for S level, they deserve a little entertainment."
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
what color is it today? Of course I don't know, it's rocket science, for pete's sake!
So say we all
Antimatter
It gives the best power to weight of any fuel
"Hmm , this liquid smells like ammonia , I wonder what its properties..."
BANG!!!!
It's a known dangerous and flawed technology. Lifter technology scaled up is the solution.
You can easily make a safe and dependable plane suitable for space or air travel from it.
And yes they do work in a vacuum http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/main.htm
The problem with the mythbuster's show test, for those who are familiar with the episode the invention was featured on, is that an asymmetrical capacitor, like any capacitor, needs 2 main things to function, a dielectric, and two electrodes.
The lifter on the show had both, with air functioning as the dielectric. However when the device was placed in a chamber where the air was pumped out (this was done to "prove" lifters don't work in a vacuum) the dielectic (air) was missing so the device couldn't work.
What they didn't test however was a solid dielectric being used (such as styrofoam or another solid dielectric). If they had, they would have found that the device works just as well in a vacuum, as the above link proves.
What was done on a show though was equivalent to taking the engine out of a car and saying this "proves" a car can't work without an Internal Combustion engine, when electric cars work everyday.
My first thought on seeing the headline was, why is NASA spending money to have green fuel, who cares what color it is?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Why not just do like the Russians have done for most of the last 55 years Paraffin & LOX
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Just buy the inventory of local liquor shops.
Bollocks.
Do you generate reams of paper every time you fill your car? No. Did you have to sign anything before doing it? No. Has a surprising amount of R&D gone into the design of car fueling systems to make them safe even for soccer moms? Yes.
Despite your libertarian fantasy, it doesn't work like that in reality. You do the risk assessment. You eliminate avoidable risk. Then you work out safe procedures. Then you train people on them. If something does wrong despite that, repeat till done. It is of the same order as basic hardening of your code to prevent SQL injection and buffer overrun, stuff you expect to do because it makes sense. The simple fact that right-wing fruit cakes pretend that somehow having to avoid killing your workers is an infringement of your liberty, doesn't make it so.
In my career I've worked with, among others, high power engines tested to destruction, simulated lightning test of electronic systems, and chemical plant. The only injury I have ever suffered was a broken finger when an emergency stop system failed while we were testing it, which was my fault for not checking that the big red lever was off on the power supply. I would prefer that other Slashdot readers who choose to pursue a career in engineering have the same safety record, or better. Degrading our safety systems to Chinese levels to make a billionaire slightly richer is not a preferred option.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Challenger blew up because one of the O-ring seals failed in a SRB due to an unexpected susceptability to prolonged low-temperature conditions. Nothing to do with asbestos.
Whatever... the shuttles had lots of heat issues with panels popping off that might not have been such a big deal with the original design specs.
My point was that it was foolish to put a tiny environmental concern over a major engineering problem that is so rare in our skies as to be irrelevant.
I'm all for environmental solutions if they don't create huge economic, logistical, or engineering problems in the process.
What makes me crazy is when we trade small environmental problems for absolutely impossible engineering or bank breaking economic problems.
It's like being given the choice of getting shot in the foot with a gun or shot in the face.
And some people keep putting the gun barrel in our collective mouths and pulling the trigger. I'm not discounting the environmental concerns at all. I'm merely saying that the solutions are typically much worse.
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Challenger blew up due to O-ring failure. The O-rings were there because of the reusability mandate from NASA and/or inability to transport a non-O-ring design from the vendor (awarded the contract in a Republican state during the Nixon years). More importantly, both Challenger and Columbia were destroyed with their crews because people on the ground allowed it to happen. They knew there was a problem on each flight, they kept the astronauts in the dark, and they assumed that things would work out because things always had worked out in the past. Can't understand why a couple people weren't prosecuted for manslaughter over Columbia. "Hey guys, the videotape shows some foam hit the wing at Mach 1 or so. Do you think maybe we should see if the wing got damaged?" "Nah, let's stick with the mission plan. Tell the astronauts there isn't a problem."
Republicans love toxic chemicals.
I don't think so. I especially DON'T think that "green" means "non-toxic to humans who handle it carelessly".
It seems to me that a "green" anything is something whose production, use, and disposal does not use up environmental capital faster than the biosphere replaces it. Alternatively, you can think of it as something whose entire life-cycle, cradle to grave, does not disturb any environmental equilibria except possibly on a highly localized scale (i.e. the footprint of the production facility).
Perhaps the best way to think of green technology is that it contributes to our species' ability to live within its means. That means natural resources, not dollars. Nature doesn't care how we shift dollars around; that's really just an internal control mechanism. It does "care" if we take fish out of the sea faster than they can reproduce, or if we discharge substances into a river faster than the natural processes can absorb and use them. The substances in question might well be "natural" materials like sewage. Discharged into a creek fast enough to alter that stream's chemistry, even *pure distilled water* might reasonably be regarded as a pollutant. It's not just the toxicity to *us* that matters in these cases; it's the damage to functioning ecosystems. "Pollutant" is a *role* a substance plays in certain circumstances, not a fixed category of substances.
DDT does not function as a pollutant when used in domestic (in-house) applications. Nor is it particularly toxic to humans. Used in agriculture or mosquito control it is a serious pollutant because of an important aspect of the way the DDT molecule interacts with the environment: ecosystems have not evolved to use DDT or any of the substances it breaks down into. So DDT and its by-products accumulate in the environment faster than the environment can transform them into benign substances; fast enough that they bio-accumulate up the food chain. The animals at the apex of the food chain are not at all sensitive to the ambient quantities of DDT byproducts in the environment, but the concentration of those by-products is far higher in the animals they predate upon.
So how does hydrazine stack up? Well, unlike DDT hydrazine *is* created and consumed by natural biological processes -- ubiquitous ones at that. It is produced by yeasts, fungi and bacteria as they digest ammonia. Therefore it is *likely* that the environment can process occasional releases of hydrazine, or even continual releases of a diluted streams of hydrazine. Of course given that hydrazine in modest concentrations is acutely toxic, any process involving it should to be examined closely and designed to be environmentally and occupationally safe. Likewise, the materials from which hydrazine is synthesized have similar properties of being ubiquitous in low levels in natural environmental processes. Some of those materials pose occupational and environmental risks, but only if handled carelessly. With reasonable care, it should be possible to produce and use hydrazine responsibly.
So hydrazine looks potentially quite "green" to me. What we have to be wary of is the possibility of adopting a *pseudo-green* alternative to hydrazine, one that might be less acutely toxic to humans while posing a greater risk of environmental damage.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Au Contraire - the susceptibility to cold was perfectly understood by the engineers.
Management is another story, but the engineers knew what the consequences of launching in conditions that cold would be. (see Roger Boisjoly)
Firstly you utterly missed my point, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with needing the paperwork. I'm just suggesting that perhaps investigating alternative fuels might be a good idea if at all possible. Even if they're more expensive to produce, the savings to be had from reduced handling costs should make up for that. If you've worked in a chemical plant then you should know Hydrozene itself is not amazingly expensive to manufacture, what's expensive is ensuring that it only goes where you want it to; getting state permits to transport hazardous materials; and insurance against things going wrong. You can't replace everything hazardous you use, but what I am saying is that if you can you should.
Also, you know it's nothing like fueling your car, the gear you use to fuel your car is commodity kit, and not designed to be used by specialists. NASA on the other hand is in the business of building and fueling a considerable number of one off devices, and each of those will need its own risk assessment. There's a good reason for that too, if you breathe in fumes from petrol it's not amazingly good for you but you probably won't die, if you breathe in the fumes from hydrozene you are going to be very ill if not dead.
The F-16 as a single engine fighter and carries hydrazine to power its EPU (emergency power unit) if the engine fails.
Hydrogen and oxygen
Hydrogen and oxygen
Ethane and oxygen
Methane and oxygen
Propane and oxygen
Butane and oxygen
Kerosene and oxygen
Mono-atomic hydrogen and oxygen
Enclosed nuclear thermal, heating H2
Enclosed nuclear thermal, heating H2O to steam
How hard can it be?
The "EPA asbestos ban caused Challenger!" story is every bit as much BS as the "CFC-free foam caused Columbia!" story. The material used on Challenger still contained asbestos, just as the failed foam on Columbia's fuel tank was made with CFCs. Read James Oberg's explamation here:
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11031097/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/myths-about-challenger-shuttle-disaster
Myth #5: Environmental ban led to weaker sealant
A favorite of the Internet, this myth states that a major factor in the disaster was that NASA had been ordered by regulatory agencies to abandon a working pressure sealant because it contained too much asbestos, and use a weaker replacement. But the replacement of the seal was unrelated to the disaster â" and occurred prior to any environmental ban.
Even the original putty had persistent sealing problems, and after it was replaced by another putty that also contained asbestos, the higher level of breaches was connected not to the putty itself, but to a new test procedure being used. âoeWe discovered that it was this leak check which was a likely cause of the dangerous bubbles in the putty that I had heard about," wrote physicist Richard Feynman, a member of the Challenger investigation board.
And the bubble effect was unconnected with the actual seal violation that would ultimately doom Challenger and its crew. The cause was an inadequate low-temperature performance of the O-ring seal itself, which had not been replaced.
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The environment doesn't care about asbestos. It makes it in large quantities (you did know that asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that is MINED, right?). Oh, and removing it didn't have anything to do with Challenger blowing up.
Removing asbestos from things isn't environmentally friendly, it's people friendly. Same with NASA's wish to get rid of hydrazine.
Just order a few 55 gallon drums of green food coloring.
Presto! Green rocket fuel!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
However, I doubt someone who can't spell hydrazine is not best placed to comment on its risks. (And yes, I do know how to make hydrazine, but I haven't done it since I ceased to have a fume cupboard and suitable glassware handy. The precursors themselves are no fun, in volume.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It also shifts the system risk to the ground handling crews, where we can deal with it (as opposed to shifting it to on-orbit failures.)
I suppose the goal here is take that risk out of ground handling, not to have on-orbit failures...
Ammonium Perchlorate is a good propellant, suitable for both earth based and extra-orbital rockets (as it provides both its own fuel and oxygen source), is a solid fuel, and can also be stored for long periods of time. Indeed, it was what NASA used for the solid rocket boosters in the now defunct shuttle program. The only real problem is accidental explosions, such as what happened here. (Hint: the second boom measured 3.4 on the Richter Scale).
emergency decent.
Heh. Emergency "decent". I crack myself up.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Whatever...
Ah, the mating cry of the greater spotted loser.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Says the troll?
Careful with those stones, slackjaw.
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They switched from CFC's to make the foam, to something "green", but the stuff kept flaking off the external tank, and then it blew a hole in the wing of the Columbia. Same thing will happen with "green" rocket fuel. Quit screwing around with peoples lives in the name of this mythical "green" crap!
Not exactly hydrazine, but a leak of a similar propellant (nitrogen tetroxide) from the reaction control system on the Apollo spacecraft almost killed the Apollo crew on re-entry during the Apollo-Soyuz mission so there is a reason NASA would look for non-toxic fuels other than just "greenness".
From wikipedia, "The only serious problem was due to an Apollo crew mistake during re-entry preparations that resulted in a very rough landing and the entry of noxious gas into the spacecraft. The reaction control system was inadvertently left on during descent, and highly toxic nitrogen tetroxide was sucked into the spacecraft as it drew in outside air."
Can't understand why a couple people weren't prosecuted for manslaughter over Columbia. "Hey guys, the videotape shows some foam hit the wing at Mach 1 or so. Do you think maybe we should see if the wing got damaged?" "Nah, let's stick with the mission plan. Tell the astronauts there isn't a problem."
(To be fair they did run a simulation with the software they used for predicting the size of debris based on damage, to try to predict the size of the hole based on debris size.)
What bugs me about Columbia, yeah even more than the loss of vehicle and crew, is the loss of the opportunity. Imagine when the decision got to whoever made the final call, and instead they'd said: "fuck it, save this ship" and made it an emergency rescue and repair. Even if it turned out that there was no damage, it's still fantastic training for an actual emergency. You fast-track the next shuttle launch (Discovery?), you put the Columbia crew on emergency power & O2 rationing, you put out an international call for the first cargo launcher capable of reaching the shuttle to take supplies up to extend Columbia's orbital duration, the crew start training for EVA to check for damage and retrieve the supplies. Meanwhile engineers on the ground start creating techniques to both extend the orbital duration and do an in-orbit repair. Once Discovery is ready, you launch two volunteer test-pilots with EVA experience, and a payload bay full of rescue gear, to meet Columbia in orbit. (The first time two orbiters have flown at the same time.) The Columbia crew are brought over to Discovery, the test-pilots do an EVA and attempt a repair using the hastily developed methods. If the repair works, the plan is for those pilots to fly Columbia back, but inevitably Columbia's pilot & co-pilot request the chance to bring "their" ship home...
Apollo 13 in high-def. The world holds its breath. NASA's finest hour.
Instead, the decision-maker was more afraid of the risk of doing an EVA (the crew weren't trained), and the inevitable call for a rescue if damage was found and then the risk of losing two shuttles. And that fear meant that it was easier to find any piece of evidence that said "no damage", it was easier to not look and just hope. (Kind of like not going to the doctor to check out that lump. As long as you don't go, it's just a lump.)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Toxic?! That stuff is so toxic, by the time you smell it, you're already dead.
aka "Green Dragon"
Very high specific impulse monopropellant. Not particularly toxic, nor are the reaction products. A bit tricky to handle.
better than that, it burns with a green flame. How much greener could you get?
I realize that there are a lot of engineering problems when dealing with cryogenic fuels, but come one now, LH2 and LOX is about as green as it gets!