Henry Spencer wrote: > > On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > My understanding is that under GOX or LOX flow within piping, anything > > organic will instantly combust... > > Not quite. With oxidizers like fluorine or ClF5, that's what will happen. > With oxygen, there may not be any action at all right away... but the > combination of LOX or high-pressure GOX and a liquid or finely-divided > combustible is a powerful explosive, which may go off immediately or may > wait until the least convenient time. (Two or three of the early X-planes > were lost to mysterious in-flight explosions, including at least one > fatality, before they finally had one explode on the *ground* where the > pieces could be recovered easily for analysis, and they discovered that > using treated-leather gaskets in the LOX plumbing was a really bad idea.) > > The unpredictability makes this a worse problem for LOX than for the > fluorine oxidizers, in many ways. With the latter, if the hardware > behaves itself in one test, it will go on doing so. > > > which will cause *any* metal plumbing next to it to also > > burn, which will instantly rupture the piping and cause a bad day. > > With LOX, it's not so predictable. Some metals are prone to ignition in > LOX, but some (e.g. copper and some stainless steels) are quite resistant > to it.
I've seen statements to the effect that "Monel" alloy is also good for LOX and HP-GOX. -dave w _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
