Energetic Solid Fuels

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Larry Lobdell Jr. - 15 Aug 2007 07:30 GMT

I just found some notecards from a paper I wrote back in high school
(1966). It has this line about Air Force development,
"Improved solid engines may be made by using exotic oxidizers as
hydrazinium diperchlorate and fuel additives as beryllium."
Whatever happened with this idea?
Larry Lobdell Jr.

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Larry Curcio - 15 Aug 2007 14:03 GMT

Yeah, or diammonium hydrazinium tetraperchlorate
for that matter. Too explosive maybe?

As for beryllium, it was too toxic.

>I just found some notecards from a paper I wrote back in high school
> (1966). It has this line about Air Force development,
> "Improved solid engines may be made by using exotic oxidizers as
> hydrazinium diperchlorate and fuel additives as beryllium."
> Whatever happened with this idea?
> Larry Lobdell Jr.

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Johnly - 15 Aug 2007 18:05 GMT

> Yeah, or diammonium hydrazinium tetraperchlorate
> for that matter. Too explosive maybe?
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>
> - Show quoted text -

Beryllium is pretty nasty, good ISP, but lower density that aluminum.
The D-ISP for a Be propellant isn't that much better, only about a 3%
over aluminum along with more combustion efficiency issues.

There's a story that the Navy was considering using a beryllium
containing propellant in a variant of the Standard Missile that
contained a "special" warhead. The thought at the time was that given
the other conditions that would lead to the use of this system,
beryllium toxicity wasn't a critical concern.

John

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Model Forum / General / Rockets / August 2007

Energetic Solid Fuels