Crew Excursion Vehicle and Military Space Tug.

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
AH-HA! I thought as much! Besides all being Sperry Ball Turret fans, we
are also all _IRONCLAD_ fans!

That sounds like an iron-clad guarantee.

(Hallerb) wrote in message ...
The Rolling Stones


My all time favorite book I wish there were a sequel!


Ahh, the zinc-propellant nuclear blow-down (er, nuclear thermal)
rocket. Refuel at the next corner. Smaller than your SUV, so no need
for a new garage.

Damn, I wish I had gone along....

/dps

In message , dave
schneider writes
(Hallerb) wrote in message
...
The Rolling Stones


My all time favorite book I wish there were a sequel!


Ahh, the zinc-propellant nuclear blow-down (er, nuclear thermal)
rocket. Refuel at the next corner.

One of Joe Haldeman's stories goes one better than this, with "the most
polluting exhaust in the history of transportation: hot ionised lead,
slightly radioactive".
--
Save the Hubble Space Telescope!
Remove spam and invalid from address to reply.

dave schneider wrote:

(Hallerb) wrote in message
...
The Rolling Stones


My all time favorite book I wish there were a sequel!


Ahh, the zinc-propellant nuclear blow-down (er, nuclear thermal)
rocket. Refuel at the next corner. Smaller than your SUV, so no need
for a new garage.

Damn, I wish I had gone along....

/dps

I think you're mistaken. I haven't reread it in awhile but I'm pretty sure
The Rolling Stones (and most of Heilein's novels set in that corner of his
multiverse) family ship was "The Rolling Stone" and it used monatomic
hydrogen (rather than diatomic H2) as a reaction medium.

Anyone else remember more clearly?

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
Remove invalid nonsense for email.

I think you're mistaken. I haven't reread it in awhile but I'm pretty sure
The Rolling Stones (and most of Heilein's novels set in that corner of his
multiverse) family ship was "The Rolling Stone" and it used

monatomic
hydrogen (rather than diatomic H2) as a reaction medium.


Thsat might be true. Personally I liked the story and characters, theb science
was secondary.

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 08:40:15 -0600, Herb Schaltegger wrote:

dave schneider wrote:

"The Rolling Stones

Ahh, the zinc-propellant nuclear blow-down (er, nuclear thermal)
rocket. I had gone along....

I think you're mistaken. I haven't reread it in awhile but I'm pretty sure
The Rolling Stones (and most of Heilein's novels set in that corner of his
multiverse) family ship was "The Rolling Stone" and it used monatomic
hydrogen (rather than diatomic H2) as a reaction medium.

Correct.
Dave was also correct about zinc propellant, but he had the wrong
book. The Zinc Hellburner Fallout Generator(tm) was what powered
"Rocket Ship Galileo".

--
Chuck Stewart
"Anime-style catgirls: Threat? Menace? Or just studying algebra?"

In message , Herb Schaltegger
lid writes
dave schneider wrote:

(Hallerb) wrote in message
...
The Rolling Stones


My all time favorite book I wish there were a sequel!


Ahh, the zinc-propellant nuclear blow-down (er, nuclear thermal)
rocket. Refuel at the next corner. Smaller than your SUV, so no need
for a new garage.

Damn, I wish I had gone along....

/dps

I think you're mistaken. I haven't reread it in awhile but I'm pretty sure
The Rolling Stones (and most of Heilein's novels set in that corner of his
multiverse) family ship was "The Rolling Stone" and it used monatomic
hydrogen (rather than diatomic H2) as a reaction medium.

Anyone else remember more clearly?

You're dead right. It's the Galileo that uses zinc; the Rolling Stone
uses stablized (spelling as in my book) monatomic hydrogen. How is it
stabilised?
And here's another for the experts; the Galileo uses thorium in her
reactor. Does any current nuclear reactor use it?
--
Save the Hubble Space Telescope!
Remove spam and invalid from address to reply.

Herb Schaltegger lid wrote



I think you're mistaken. I haven't reread it in awhile but I'm pretty sure
The Rolling Stones (and most of Heilein's novels set in that corner of his
multiverse) family ship was "The Rolling Stone" and it used monatomic
hydrogen (rather than diatomic H2) as a reaction medium.

Anyone else remember more clearly?

That's right, "single-H." A 1947 Heinlein juvenile, "Rocketship
Galileo," had the intreped lads going to the moon(*) in a nuclear
rocket that used some metal as reaction mass. I thought it was
mercury, but apparently it was zinc.

(*) They found a bunch of Nazi die-hards there.

In article ,
Jonathan Silverlight wrote:
You're dead right. It's the Galileo that uses zinc; the Rolling Stone
uses stablized (spelling as in my book) monatomic hydrogen. How is it
stabilised?

That's a good question. A very good question. It would be worth a lot
to know the answer...

Since it's pretty much inevitably going to come unstabilized in reactor
conditions, the first thing that will happen is that all that expensive
uranium, graphite, etc. hardware cluttering up the engine interior is
going to melt and wash out the tailpipe. And the rocket won't miss it,
either. The temperatures reached by the 2H-H2 reaction *far* exceed
those of any solid-core nuclear rocket; a chemical rocket running on
stabilized atomic hydrogen would have double or triple the Isp of that
nuclear rocket.

The only problem is that we have no idea how to stabilize the stuff, and
it's not because people haven't *tried*.

(Well, the *other* problem is that it would also be the mother of all
chemical explosives, making TNT or cyclonite look like damp gunpowder
by comparison...)

And here's another for the experts; the Galileo uses thorium in her
reactor. Does any current nuclear reactor use it?

As far as I know, that turned out to be impractical -- the only way you
can make thorium into a useful nuclear fuel is to process it through a
breeder reaction, turning Th-232 into U-233. (Experimental reactors
*have* been run on U-233, and for that matter experimental fission bombs
have been built with it.)
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

In article ,
Allen Thomson wrote:
...A 1947 Heinlein juvenile, "Rocketship
Galileo," had the intreped lads going to the moon(*) in a nuclear
rocket that used some metal as reaction mass. I thought it was
mercury, but apparently it was zinc.

They'd have preferred mercury, but couldn't afford it. (Evidently they
didn't consider its toxicity an issue, a mistake no modern scientist
would make...)
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |