Can anyone explain why we still use old fashioned fossil fuel for rockets? Why no nuclear power?
Also why are we so fucking slow with ITER. jeeez energy really should by now free and available for everyone everytime. It's like living in the stone age here.
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My guess would be safety concerns are on of the reasons
I think that safety would be of high priority, especially with what the US did last time they investigated nuclear research.
> I'll give you a hint: Japan was never the same way again
I think there may be restrictions on nuclear research, but even then there are better ways to propel a rocket through space.
Also ITER is definitely going to take a long time; the guys who are doing it (I think) that receive too much funding, although they are making the equivalent of a star in your pocket.
>Can anyone explain why we still use old fashioned fossil fuel for rockets?
because kerosene and gas are most powerful cheap burning substances we have
read a book nigger
*the guys who are doing it (I think) don't receive too much funding, although they are making the equivalent of a star in your pocket.
Sorry this is my first time posting here
>fossil fuels for rockets
I didn't know Hydrogen and Oxygen were fossil fuels
There may be loads of it, but it doesn't have enough thrust (like me in bed) or force to push a rocket suddenly up. That's why we use Hydrogen and Oxygen.
> Shit gets so fucking lit, and pushes the rocket up much more faster. Also the reaction is a lot more faster too, so more energy is produced in a small amount of time
>That's why we use Hydrogen and Oxygen.
who is we?
plenty of rockets still fly on LOX and Kerosene, even Soyuz, Atlas V Chink Long Marches and SpaceX Falcons
LOX/LH2 so far is mostly used for first stages only, since it needs to be cooled and the structure to properly store it for an extended amount of time would be quite heavy
Can anyone explain why this girl is giving me a boner only because she's wearing tights ?
Forget it, OP has obviously no clue
brainlets ahoy
most rockets use kerosene, a fossil fuel
even those that use hydrogen get it mostly from fossil fuels, not electrolysis of water, because it is cheaper
>the guys who are doing it (I think) that receive too much funding
Did you mean they don't receive too much funding? Because that is the truth afaik.
>why we still use old fashioned fossil fuel
bcoz it's like ur mom, cheap & easy
...
Rocket fuel is liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Not fossil fuels.
A great deal of progress was made on nuclear rockets in the 1960s. Ultimately shelved because it competed with social programs and the Vietnam War for funding, and because someone realized that there was no mission for it unless we were planning on sending men to Mars.
We got to the Moon first, the taxpayers lost interest in space flight, and that was that.
Chemical rockets are adequate (albeit barely) for travel to LEO. Nuclear would only be used in upper stages because;
A) lousy thrust/weight ratio
B) even the best designs spewed fission products
Ah, yes, Project Pluto. No pilots, so no need to carry heavy shielding. Ultimately killed because;
A) ICBMs and the shrinking mass of H-bombs eliminated the need for something which could fly forever until the order came to destroy Moscow.
B) It was supposed to fly at treetop level to evade Soviet radar. That meant flying across Europe and killing everything within a mile or so of its ground-track.
What are those better ways to propel a rocket through space? Orion? Ion thrusters?
because the elite gave the public fake science and low level technology and made you study stupid relativity to make you think your smart.
PS: Einstein was an idiot.
Thrusr to weight ratio. Difficulty of safely testing a nuclear rocket.
Bubble.
Plenty of rockets burn kerosene.
>B) even the best designs spewed fission products
This is not true. Nuclear thermal rockets, the only kind of nuclear rocket ever actually built, releases no fission products during normal use.
RP-1, a highly refined form of kerosene, is a very common fuel for rockets. Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Atlas V use RP-1.
It's because you're becoming a man, user.
How would a nuclear rocket work? Nuclear reactors generate heat which is used to power steam generators, correct? How would that work for a rocket? Huge heavy water tanks to generate steam to shoot out of the bottom?
Wrong. Just finished "To the End of the Solar System" (Apogee books), a history of the development (both the technical aspects and the political wrangling) behind Rover, Kiki, etc.
I don't know what you'd consider "normal" use, but all the ones ever made spat out fuel elements. It's a rough environment in there. Goes from liquid hydrogen temperatures to just below the melting point of the engine over the course of a meter or so.
Nuclear reactor heats hydrogen into a jet.
You run it as hot as you can, short of the engine melting. It can't even produce a jet as hot as a chemical rocket does. When you burn hydrogen & oxygen, the heat is released IN the gas. You only need to worry about keeping the chamber walls "cool" by recirculating the LOX before it's burned. In a nuclear rocket, the reactor has to be hotter than the gas -- or there's no heat transfer. And some of the most heat-resistant materials can't be used because they can't stand radiation or they absorb neutrons and kill the reaction.
So a nuclear rocket can't attain the same high temperatures. Its advantage is the exhaust is just hydrogen. At a given temperature, the lower the molecular weight of the exhaust gas, the faster the molecules move. Hydrogen's as light as you can get.
Chemical engines top out at about an Isp of 450 whereas nukes can achieve 800, or maybe more.
Interesting. Is that theoretical or have there actually been experimental nuclear rockets tested?
Both Russia and USA tested them in the 70s to 80s.
They got shelved seeing we weren't really looking that far from Earth anymore.
As for why, RP1 has a much better energy density than Hydrogen. The hydrogen rockets like the DeltaIV and Japanese H-II are quite large for their payload capacities.
What are the probabilities of a catastrophic failure of a nuclear rocket compared to that of a chemical rocket?
Definitely. Look up en.wikipedia.org
or go to projectrho.com
The original idea was to use them to lob warheads at Russia. But H-bombs rapidly got smaller and chemical ICBMs were good enough. Then they were to be utilized in the construction and supply of a permanent Moon base or to send men to Mars. Politicians decided neither of those was an immediate priority when they needed the money for the Vietnam War and for social programs. So it was killed.
Yes, the low density of liquid hydrogen is a major disadvantage. It takes huge tanks (and insulation) to hold it. Chemical rockets hardly ever burn H2 & O2 in a stoichiometric ratio, producing only water. Feeding in excess H2 lowers the average molecular weight of the exhaust and improves jet-velocity even if chemical energy is being wasted by not burning it. On the other hand, using excess H2 requires those bulky tanks discussed above and that plays hob with the mass-ratio. Engineering is all about trade-offs.
The goal of Project Rover was .997 reliability.
That is, 3 failures out of every 1000 burns.
And the "failures" wouldn't really be failures. I mean, not blowing up the rocket. If full power couldn't be maintained they'd just lower the flow rate and burn longer. A loss of efficiency, but no more.
Since they were never flight-tested, there are no statistics on how they would have worked in practice.
Because of the possibility of a catastrophic failure though, they were only intended for use in upper stages. The first stage would be chemical.
As I noted in the ground tests did spew radiation and fragments of the fuel elements. Measurements showed the radioactivity which drifted beyond the range of the test site was "acceptable", just a few percent of what it was legal to expose civilians to. High altitude airline pilots get more and all the above-ground bomb tests in the '50s exposed the public to MUCH more. But people tend to panic at the mere mention of the word "radiation".
There were protests when the Cassini mission was launched to Saturn. Radioisotope power source. The trajectory made several passes by Earth to get a gravity-assist on the way to Saturn. What if it accidentally hit Earth and spread a couple of kilos of THE MOST DEADLY SUBSTANCE EVER PRODUCED? Millions could die!!!!!!
Total hysterical BS, but it shows why it'll be a long time before atomics will be used in space flight. Which means we're very unlikely to sent humans further than Mars (and even that is iffy, regardless of Musk's plans.)
Why aren't we accelerating that thing in thurster too? Also why it's not burning with oxygen after being heated?
What are you asking?
Makes no sense if you're referring to , either the text or the girl.