TNT equivalent of an exploding LOX/RP-1 rocket

"Lou Adornato" wrote in message
news:j1OKb.771155$Fm2.748509@attbi_s04...

"Carey Sublette" wrote in message
.net...
But it should be noted that the explosion of a bi-propellant rocket is
actually quite unlike the detonation of a high explosive, since the
energy
release is limited by the mixing of the fuel and oxidizer and cannot
detonate all at once. The example of the Challenger illustrates this
quite
well. Despite ripping up in a hypersonic airstream, which probably
accelerated the mixing (I would think), it did not generate a high
pressure
blast wave, which would have pulverized the cabin instantly. The
astronauts
are thought to have survived all the way down to the ocean surface.


Technically, Challenger did not "blow up". NASA's frame-by-frame analysis
of the launch video shows that the ET collapsed when the O2 tank was
punctured by the nose of the SRB (which had pivoted around the forward
attach point after the aft burned through). This resulted in the sudden
release of a lot of gas at cryogenic temperatures, which immediately
condensed all of the atmospheric water in the area. The result looked
like
a cloud of white smoke, but there was no evidence of combustion of the
LH2.
There's a small orange/yellow fireball visible in part of the cloud that's
thought to be the detonation of the hydrazine from the OMS tank when it
came
in contact with the condensation (hydrazine and water don't get along
well),
but even that failed to set off the LH2. If there had been an LH2
explosion, there probably wouldn't have been a cloud (the combustion
product
is water vapor).

The real damage was done by the supersonic slipstream, which shredded the
orbiter's airframe as soon as it started to tumble.

For monopropellant engines, its a different matter.

Depends. If you're talking about a monopropellant/catalyst (like hydrogen
peroxide and silver), there won't be any explosion. If you're talking
about
a solid rocket like the Shuttle SRBs, the energy release is proportional
to
the surface area of the combustion zone; if something happens to shatter
the
propellant mass (creating a sudden, dramatic increase in the size of the
combustion zone), you'll get an explosion, but unless you've pulverized
the
propellant, it'll still be a fairly small fraction of the total propellant
available (of course, the rest of the propellant will rain down as flaming
chunks, which happened in Guyana). The SRB fuel is supposed to have the
consistency of a pencil eraser, which I'd guess would be fairly hard to
shatter.

Depends on the failure scenario. The rate of combustion of a solid
propellant is also dependent on pressure, if the nozzle clogs up due to
chunks of propellant lodging, and the surface area (and thus combustion
rate) increases)then a autocatalytic process can set in resulting in
propellant detonation. This has been seen in smaller solid propellant motors
(a problem with nitrocellulose fuelled artillery rockets in WWII during
development), a similar autocatalytic process led to detonation of ammonium
nitrate in Texas City, and ammonium perchlorate based fuels can detonate,
witness the ammonium perchlorate plant that generated a very impressive true
detonation a few years ago in Nevada (IIRC).

Carey