On Thu, 29 May 2003 18:58:59 -0700 (PDT), Adrian Tymes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Depends. If the choice is between certain death by >massive abrupt deceleration, versus potential or even >probably injury or death by not-so-massive abrupt >deceleration and the chance of winding up in a flaming >puddle of rocket fuel (assuming the collision itself, >or electrical leads jarred loos by the collision, >might ignite the flame)...the latter is actually better >because the worst is not guaranteed. You might as well assume the propellants will ignite. Murphy is an opportunist, and when things are going badly, he can be counted on to step in and make things really go to hell. The big problem here is that a cold liquid rocket doesn't have anywhere near the performance of a working biprop. It wouldn't accomplish much in the way of deceleration. >But this would require a careful analysis of the >probabilities and forces for the specific rocket and >fuel load. I doubt it's something we could >arbitrarily determine for all VTVLs. Or any other vehicles. Qualitative arguments can tell you when something is a bad idea, but they can't verify it's a good idea. >Thinking about it, though - if you were using H2O2, >monoprop or bi, wouldn't it be as safe to dump that? >(Not a short distance over people, of course, but you >wouldn't want to dump LOX there either.) H2O2 would >likely react away in a short time, possibly mostly >before you hit the ground in some cases. No; LOX is safe to dump because its heat capacity is so low. It'll evaporate before it hits the ground. Peroxide would just go plop splash and begin decomposing and boiling. GOX is one thing; gaseous peroxide is quite another. But I'm still baffled by this fascination for crashworthiness hacks. -R -- "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." -- Robert Wilensky, UC Berkeley _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
