goal week 6

This week, I will go shopping for the materials I need to test. and if I have extra time, contact my export to help me start testing with these.

Ryan's shopping list

1. hair spray
2. pure grain alcohol
3. cooking oil
4. gasoline
5. bug spray
6. cleaning chemicals

I will use one cup of each in my test.

possible testing locations

1. Wolfe park
2. Kyle's backyard
3. Stop & Shop parking-lot*
4. dead end road at my house

*last resort!!!!

goal week 5

this week I will search for a safe location to test the fuels I have listed in my notebook. if I accomplish this with more time in the week I will start gathering the materials.

a list of common house hold items that are combustible

1. hair spray
2. pure grain alcohol
3. cooking oil
4. gasoline*
5. bug spray
6. cleaning chemicals

*control

week 3

For week three, I will look up some common house hold items that might work as rocket fuel.

☺

notes

The most common liquid propellants in use today:

• LOX and kerosene (RP-1). Used for the lower stages of most Russian and Chinese boosters, the first stages of the Saturn V and Atlas V, and all stages of the developmental Falcon 1 and Falcon 9. Very similar to Robert Goddard's first rocket. This combination is widely regarded as the most practical for boosters that lift off at ground level and therefore must operate at full atmospheric pressure.

• LOX and liquid hydrogen, used in the Space Shuttle orbiter, the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V, Saturn V upper stages, the newer Delta IV rocket, the H-IIA rocket, and most stages of the European Ariane rockets.

• Nitrogen tetroxide (N₂O₄) and hydrazine (N₂H₄), MMH, or UDMH. Used in military, orbital, and deep space rockets because both liquids are storable for long periods at reasonable temperatures and pressures. N₂O₄/UDMH is the main fuel for the Proton rocket. This combination is hypergolic, making for attractively simple ignition sequences. The major inconvenience is that these propellants are highly toxic, hence they require careful handling.

• Monopropellants such as hydrogen peroxide, hydrazine, and nitrous oxide are primarily used for attitude control and spacecraft station-keeping where their long-term storability, simplicity of use, and ability to provide the tiny impulses needed, outweighs their lower specific impulse as compared to bipropellants. Hydrogen peroxide is also used to drive the turbopumps on the first stage of the Soyuz launch vehicle.

notes

History

The earliest rockets were created hundreds of years ago by the Chinese, and were used primarily for fireworks displays and as weapons. They were fueled with black powder, a type of gunpowder consisting of a mixture of charcoal, sulfur and potassium nitrate(their version of black powder). This formulation is now used in Black Powder Rocket Motors. Rocket propellant technology did not advance until the end of the 19th century, by which time smokeless powder had been developed, originally for use in firearms and artillery pieces. Smokeless powders and related compounds have seen use as double-base propellants.

notes

Advantages

Solid-fueled rockets are much easier to store and handle than liquid-fueled rockets, which makes them ideal for military applications. In the 1970s and 1980s the U.S. switched entirely to solid-fueled ICBMs: the LGM-30 Minuteman and LG-118A Peacekeeper (MX). In the 1980s and 1990s, the USSR/Russia also deployed solid-fueled ICBMs (RT-23, RT-2PM, and RT-2UTTH), but retains two liquid-fueled ICBMs (R-36 and UR-100N). All solid-fueled ICBMs on both sides have three initial solid stages and a precision maneuverable liquid-fueled bus used to fine tune the trajectory of the reentry vehicle.

Their simplicity also makes solid rockets a good choice whenever large amounts of thrust are needed and cost is an issue. The Space Shuttle and many other orbital launch vehicles use solid-fueled rockets in their first stages (solid rocket boosters) for this reason.

[edit]Disadvantages

Relative to liquid fuel rockets, solid rockets have a number of disadvantages. Solid rockets have a lower specific impulse than liquid-fueled rockets. It is also difficult to build a large mass ratio solid rocket because almost the entire rocket is the combustion chamber, and must be built to withstand the high combustion pressures. If a solid rocket is used to go all the way to orbit, the payload fraction is very small. (For example, the Orbital Sciences Pegasus rocket is an air-launched three-stage solid rocket orbital booster. Launch mass is 23,130 kg, low earth orbit payload is 443 kg, for a payload fraction of 1.9%. Compare to a Delta IV Medium, 249,500 kg, payload 8600 kg, payload fraction 3.4% without air-launch assistance.)

A drawback to solid rockets is that they cannot be throttled in real time, although a predesigned thrust schedule can be created by altering the interior propellant geometry.

Solid rockets can often be shut down before they run out of fuel. Essentially, the rocket is vented or an extinguishant injected so as to terminate the combustion process. In some cases termination destroys the rocket, and then this is typically only done by aRange Safety Officer if the rocket goes awry. The third stages of the Minuteman and MX rockets have precision shutdown ports which, when opened, reduce the chamber pressure so abruptly that the interior flame is blown out.^{[citation needed]} This allows a more precise trajectory which improves targeting accuracy.

Finally, casting very large single-grain rocket motors has proved to be a very tricky business. Defects in the grain can cause explosions during the burn, and these explosions can increase the burning propellant surface enough to cause a runaway pressure increase, until the case fails.

what is rocket fuel?

Rocket propellant is mass that is stored in some form of propellant tank, prior to being used as the propulsive mass that is ejected from a rocket engine in the form of a fluid jet to produce thrust. A fuel propellant is often burned with an oxidizer propellant to produce large volumes of very hot gas. These gases expand and push on a nozzle, which accelerates them until they rush out of the back of the rocket at extremely high speed, making thrust. Sometimes the propellant is not burned, but can be externally heated for more performance. For smaller attitude control thrusters, a compressed gas escapes the spacecraft through a propelling nozzle.

Chemical rocket propellants are most commonly used, which undergo exothermic chemical reactions to produce hot gas used by a rocket for propulsive purposes.

In ion propulsion, the propellant is made of electrically charged atoms (ions), which are electromagnetically pushed out of the back of the spacecraft. Magnetically accelerated ion drives are not usually considered to be rockets however, but a similar class of thrusters use electrical heating and magnetic nozzles.

notes

rocket fuel is often burned w/ an oxidizer

my first source

Rocket propellant

rocket fuel of today

I choose rocket fuel as a project because I don't think gasoline is the cheapest or the most combustible fuel.