Not really , but your mom stood no chance at all of getting her
hands on
propellant . They watched it pretty close , the formula was a secret
back then . Might still be , but I can't remember now just what was
in it .

Not really so secret. I got lucky enough to meet and become good
aquaintances with the guy who originally formulated the SRB package. He
is not well now - very advanced in age - but lives in Utah, and still
sells the surplus chemicals that Morton Thiokol rejected on QC issues.
He has tons and tons of the stuff, and lots of amateur rocketeers get
their chems from him.

It's basically ammonium perchlorate, HTPB (or now CTPB) rubber, aluminum,
iron oxide, and carbon, cured (then, at least) by an isocyanate curative.

I still have a few "kits" of the stuff.

LLoyd

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:26:59 -0500, "Lloyd E. Sponenburgh"
lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:


Not really , but your mom stood no chance at all of getting her
hands on
propellant . They watched it pretty close , the formula was a secret
back then . Might still be , but I can't remember now just what was
in it .

Not really so secret. I got lucky enough to meet and become good
aquaintances with the guy who originally formulated the SRB package. He
is not well now - very advanced in age - but lives in Utah, and still
sells the surplus chemicals that Morton Thiokol rejected on QC issues.
He has tons and tons of the stuff, and lots of amateur rocketeers get
their chems from him.

It's basically ammonium perchlorate, HTPB (or now CTPB) rubber, aluminum,
iron oxide, and carbon, cured (then, at least) by an isocyanate curative.

I still have a few "kits" of the stuff.

LLoyd

Lloyd, if you're talking about John R, he died a little over a year
ago.
http://www.rocketryplanet.com/content/view/3155/29/

The stuff in the space shuttle uses PBAN and an epoxy curing agent
rather than HTPB and isocyanate. Since it's a man-rated vehicle they
never changed the older technology.
--
Best -- Terry

Terry fired this volley in
:

Lloyd, if you're talking about John R, he died a little over a year
ago.

Oops! I didn't know. I'm not a "rocketry guy", I'm in the fireworks
business. We didn't get the news. I did know he was in bad health, but
the last time I talked with him was when I bought a drum of AP from him
about three years ago.

That's a real loss. John Rahkonen was a gem, and never failed to give a
guy whatever he knew to get him to the next stage (so to speakG).

FWIW, and maybe his memory was failing, he told me (and gave me the
approximate formula) for what he claimed was the original SRB package.
He told me it had been changed, and cited CTPB... But he was a long way
past that project, and maybe he forgot... he was in his late 70's, I
think, when I got aquainted with him.

I'm really sorry to hear he passed. He was a really nice fellow who
helped anyone who called.

LLoyd