$64 Billion and seventeen years to land on the moon. What's wrong with this picture?

William R. Thompson wrote:

That could have been caused just as easily by the hydrazine in the fuel.


Lucky you; little did you know you were posting to THE KOMET KID! The
fuel was C-Stoff (57% methanol + 30% hydrazine hydrate + 13% water, with
small amounts of either cupro-potassium cyanide or copper oxide added as
a stabilizer.

As I recall the Me-163 had some of its fuel and oxidizer tanks in
the cockpit--a good idea if you're out to kill Luftwaffe pilots
during WW II, but otherwise not too desirable.


The propellant tanks in the cockpit (one was along either side of you at
your feet) held "T-Stoff" (80% Hydrogen Peroxide plus Oxyquinoline or
Phosphate as a stabilizer, and the remainder water). You also the main
T-Stoff tank directly behind the pilot's seat, so you were pretty much
surrounded by H2O2. I am going to post what exactly happened to the
unfortunate pilot as recounted by Wolfgang Spate, his squadron commander
(and best friend of the pilot) at the bottom of this post- this is
pretty appalling stuff, so if any of the readers are a bit queasy, you
may want to give this part a miss (at this point everyone reading the
post went right to the bottom of it see the "Good Stoff"...er "stuff".)


What about a combination of hydrogen peroxide and potassium
permanganate?


They did use "Z-Stoff"; an aqueous solution of either sodium or calcium
permanganate (the Germans used both during the war) the other use for
these permanganates besides V-2s was in reusable liquid fueled assisted
take off rockets.


They're hypergolic, easily stored and relatively benign,
at least when compared to some other hypergolics. The Isp of
pure hydrogen peroxide as a monopropellant is low (150, according to
one of my sources) but it's somewhat higher when used as the
oxidizer with other propellants (up to 250 or so).

I can't find any performance figures for H202/permanganate; evidently
no one ever considered this combination as a fuel.


It serves primarily as a catalyst to cause the H2O2 to decompose into
superheated steam and oxygen; it was the oxygen in the mixture that
made the idea of adding fuel to it so attractive.

However, it was
used to power the turbopumps in the V-2, so evidently it can be
handled with some safety under less-than-ideal conditions. In
addition, pictures of the V-2 power plant show a relatively small
permanganate tank in relation to the size of the peroxide tank.
Mass and size savings might make a fair trade-off for lowered
performance.


As I mentioned above it's primarily to get the peroxide to react and
decompose. Another way to make H2O2 decompose is pass it though fine
pellets of silver. The RD-107 and RD-108 rocket engines on the Soviet
R-7 booster (Soyuz/Progress use this as the first stage) use decomposed
hydrogen peroxide steam to drive their turbopumps, just as the V-2 did.
These motors uses a solid catalyst to cause decomposition.

Pat

Last Warning!

I
C
K
Y

S
T
U
F
F

B
E
L
O
W


The pilot was Oberleutant Joschi Pohs, and the date December 30th,
1943, The Me-163A (this was a lower powered unarmed variant of the Komet
that used the H2O2/Permanganate "cold" motor; the fighter variant was
the Me-163B, equipped with the H202/Hydrazine "hot" motor) had started
it's takeoff run, but the jettisonable takeoff dolly bounced off the
ground and struck the aircraft, cutting off the feed of "Z-Stoff to the
motor which automatically shut down shortly after takeoff; the pilot was
too low to bail out, so he made a tight turn and tried to land with a
lot of his propellants still on board, but he clipped a radio antennae
on his way in and the aircraft spun into the ground and exploded.
The fire crew got to the aircraft very quickly, and put the fire out in
short order, as he ran up to the crashed aircraft Spate could see his
friend's legs sticking out of the wreckage, but was stopped by the base
doctor before he reached the aircraft.
The doctor informed him that Pohs was dead, and nothing could be done
for him. Nevertheless Spate looked into the wrecked aircraft and
confirmed the the doctor was right... and that was about as far as it
would have gone... if it hadn't been for the fact that Spate was the
squadron commander, and it was the doctor's responsibility to report to
him regarding the specifics of any accident that caused a fatality to
the squadron. In this case the specifics were that the aircraft ended
up on its back and the ruptured hydrogen peroxide tanks had drained over
the inverted (and hopefully unconscious or dead) pilot, causing his
right arm to be completely dissolved, and his head and left arm to be
converted into something resembling soft jelly. His protective flight
suit survived fairly intact though; you can read up on the flight suit
they used he http://www.sml.lr.tudelft.nl/~home/r...3/clothing.htm

Pat

Neil Gerace wrote:


Are we talking about a KMnO4 solution, or a powder of the pure stuff or
what?


On the reusable booster rockets it was in a fairly thick paste-like
form; since it got dropped due to clogging the motor nozzles on the
early German rocket fighter motors derived from the JATO motors it was
probably of fairly thick composition in their case also.

Pat

William R. Thompson wrote:


The solution. I have no idea of its strength, but I would expect
it to have been fairly concentrated.

The Walter engine for the Me-163 Komet had a gas generator for its
pressure-feed system which used catalyst-impregnated stones held
inside a wire-mesh basket, placed inside a steel chamber.


Since we are all talking about them, here is a web page dedicated to Dr.
Walter and his Hydrogen Peroxide motors:
http://www.walter-rockets.i12.com/
There is an interactive set of diagrams of the Komet's motor he
http://www.walter-rockets.i12.com/design/a23view.htm
And the catalyst chamber page can be reached from the above diagram; it
is he http://www.walter-rockets.i12.com/design/steam.htm#a2


The Merck Index lists the toxic effects of potassium permanganate as
emesis, profuse salivation, rapid respiration and albuminaria (the
presence of various proteins in the urine; evidently enough KMnO4
will cause kidney damage). While bad, that's nowhere near as bad
as hydrazine.


Or even hydrogen peroxide; a sure sign of hydrogen peroxide ingestion is
an odd burning sensation during urination....due to the presence of
superheated steam in the urine.

Pat

(Who had fun convincing his friends that the strange gizmo on his shelf
was a catalyst mixing chamber off of a Me-163 HWK 109-509 rocket motor
he had bought off of E-Bay; and certainly not the inner workings of a
cheap Walmart Espresso machine like the one that used to be over in the
cupboard...but somehow seems to have been misplaced about the same time
the "rocket motor part" arrived.)

Neil Gerace wrote:

Since your message contains "This is not spam!", is it spam?


This was just the sort of razor-edged logical contradiction that proved
to be the undoing of Harcourt Fenton Mudd and his androids in "I, Mudd"!

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

(snip of lots of information)

I am going to post what exactly happened to the
unfortunate pilot as recounted by Wolfgang Spate, his squadron commander
(and best friend of the pilot) at the bottom of this post- this is
pretty appalling stuff,

In "Rocket Fighter," Mano Ziegler only mentions that Pohs was
"dissolved," and that he was probably unconscious as a result
of hitting his head on the instrument panel during the crash.
Given the damage you describe to Pohs's head, that may have been
wishful thinking on Ziegler's part.

As I mentioned above it's primarily to get the peroxide to react and
decompose. Another way to make H2O2 decompose is pass it though fine
pellets of silver.

Or silver coins. Back in the early Sixties I used dimes to get
hydrogen out of 3% hydrogen peroxide solutions. I never did
generate enough hydrogen to fill a balloon.

The RD-107 and RD-108 rocket engines on the Soviet
R-7 booster (Soyuz/Progress use this as the first stage) use decomposed
hydrogen peroxide steam to drive their turbopumps, just as the V-2 did.
These motors uses a solid catalyst to cause decomposition.

That sounds like the calcium permanganate impregnated stones used
in the Walter engine.

--Bill Thompson

"William R. Thompson" wrote in message
...
Pat Flannery wrote:


The RD-107 and RD-108 rocket engines on the Soviet
R-7 booster (Soyuz/Progress use this as the first stage) use decomposed
hydrogen peroxide steam to drive their turbopumps, just as the V-2 did.
These motors uses a solid catalyst to cause decomposition.

That sounds like the calcium permanganate impregnated stones used
in the Walter engine.


So the permanganate here is only a catalyst for H2O2 decomposition, and not
an oxidiser?

In message , William R. Thompson
writes
Pat Flannery wrote:

As I mentioned above it's primarily to get the peroxide to react and
decompose. Another way to make H2O2 decompose is pass it though fine
pellets of silver.

Or silver coins. Back in the early Sixties I used dimes to get
hydrogen out of 3% hydrogen peroxide solutions. I never did
generate enough hydrogen to fill a balloon.

I thought that when hydrogen peroxide decomposed it went to water and
oxygen. It's an oxidising agent, not a reducing agent, surely?
--
Save the Hubble Space Telescope!
Remove spam and invalid from address to reply.

(Derek Lyons) wrote:
You don't bother to show that my discussion is arrant nonsense

I've *tried* to. But you keep trying to bring the discussion back
towards the shortcoming of an individual vehicle and supposed
advantages of another type.

Convince me of something, don't impress me with your arrogance.

I've *tried* to convince you. But you dodge addressing the points I
raise, and substitute criticism of the Shuttle for a discussion of the
merits of reuseables vs. expendables, and the engineering and
philosophy behind both. You cannot get beyond the problems of an
implementation to see the structure beyond. Every time I mention
re-useable, you bring up the Shuttle and it's faults, and then treat
it's problems as eternal realities.

A prime example, over in .policy you complain of the cost of SSME's,
and then go on to dismiss all re-useables as being problematic because
of those individual problems. It never occurs to you to ask if the
problems are endemic, systemic, or individual.

D.


Derek,

this is one of your most substantive replies, and I appreciate that.
Sorry about the delay in anwering, as I missed it until I scrolled
through the whole thread.

I understand fully that the Shuttle is not the only possible reusable
design. From what I've seen of other reusable designs (none of which
have flown yet), we don't have good answers for the hard problems of
reusables. X-33 has hard problems. OSP WVs have hard problems. Some
of these are mitigated by lifting body designs. Some of these are
mitigated by reusable capsules (none of which have flown).

There are good reasons to have reusable vehicles once the flight rate
crosses a threshold; is that threshold 10-20 flights? Most of us
agree not. Is that threshold 50-150 flights? Maybe, but our current
data point makes us suspect not. 1000 flights? Now we're talking.

Do we have good answers to the hard problems of reusable in our
current data point? No, although the answers we did have allowed us
to get by with a large standing army. The recent proposals for
reusable vehicles have better answers, but my understanding is that
there will still be a large standing army needed.

There are a lot of interesting ideas for reusable vehicles, but I am
still waiting for evidence that we can address the hard problems
profitably.

As to why earlier in the thread I was talking about OV-20x, it is
because it pertained to *your* comment about the size of the change in
vehicle vs the amount of effort to implement, and how that affected
the payoff of the change. I don't see that responding to your comment
is irrelevant.

In any case, I think the near-future involves step-wise approaches to
reusability. Eventually, we will know enough to put it all together.
I don't reject reusability out of hand, as *you assume I do*, but I'm
still waiting for evidence that we can succeed at it now.

To repeat your comment:
I've *tried* to convince you. But you dodge addressing the points I
raise, and substitute criticism of the Shuttle for a discussion of the
merits of reuseables vs. expendables, and the engineering and
philosophy behind both.

No, you did not try to convince me. You merely accused me of
anti-reusable dogma. You presented no data, no arguments, merely a
"Me Tarzan, you Wrong" attitude. "Naughty, naught capsule person".

You did not refute my contention that TPS is an issue (I acknowledge
that Kim Keller reported that it was not an issue for OSP, but I still
think Ray Schmitt indicated that a large standing army is needed for
those designs, too).

You didn't provide evidence for reusable motors that overcome the
issues of the SSMEs.

You did argue that the weight of the wings was justified because of
the cross-range capabilities they provide; I agree that the
cross-range is valuable, but for many return missions the cross-range
can be traded for timing of reentry. As a specific example, returning
the CMGs from ISS...they wouldn't be significantly affected by a day
or two extra in picking the burn time.

In sci.space.station, Jim O provides the following in the thread
"experiments not returned to earth":

This is a case for expediting development of the IRDT 'inflatable'
down-cargo vehicles. ESA is currently paying the Russians to perfect this
system, which has had mixed results on flight tests over the past few years.

A small package goes up, it is loaded with cargo, and jettisoned -- perhaps
it takes a short EVA. Then the shield inflates, the vehicle lands, and the
gear is recovered.

which provides a neat data point to my Foam In Place Cargo Return
(FIPCaR tm) suggestion elsewhere. It will be interesting to see how
far IRDT can be developed.

/dps

Jonathan Silverlight wrote:

William R. Thompson writes
Pat Flannery wrote:

As I mentioned above it's primarily to get the peroxide to react and
decompose. Another way to make H2O2 decompose is pass it though fine
pellets of silver.

Or silver coins. Back in the early Sixties I used dimes to get
hydrogen out of 3% hydrogen peroxide solutions. I never did
generate enough hydrogen to fill a balloon.

I thought that when hydrogen peroxide decomposed it went to water and
oxygen. It's an oxidising agent, not a reducing agent, surely?

Now you know why I never became a chemist. I must have the memory
confused with one of those other junior-scientist experiments I
ran with test tubes and 25 cent bottles of "Perfect" chemicals
from the local hobby shop.

--Bill Thompson

Neil Gerace wrote:





So the permanganate here is only a catalyst for H2O2 decomposition, and not
an oxidizer?


It was a catalyst in both this case and the Me-163; the early "cold"
Me-163 motor was basically a monopropellant one, the "hot" motor used
H2O2 as the oxidizer and the Hydrazine/Methanol mixture as the fuel.
The cold motor generated a great deal of steam as it ran:
http://www.walter-rockets.i12.com/wa...ix/163av1b.jpg
The exhaust on the hot motor was a more transparent.

Pat