Company planning biggest rocket since man on moon
On Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:04:54 -0400, "Tom Gardner" w@w wrote:
************ Mom was a mathematician, her department checked all the equations for other departments. She did get me a sample shuttle tile. It's like Styrofoam, very light and fragile, but you can heat it with an oxy/atc torch and grab it with your hand and it's cool. She never did get me a sample of solid propellant....bitch! Tom, it's not hard to make (almost) the exact propellant used in the space shuttle. I do it in my lab; I'm sure a lot of guys do it in their garages. Ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (APCP) is less hazardous than blackpowder, smokeless, and/or most fireworks. It generally takes a flame to light APCP---a spark won't do it---and once it's lit it burns about like a road flare. It's about 16% powdered aluminum, 69+% ammonium perchlorate, a fraction of a percent of red iron oxide, 2% epoxy curing agent (DER331 works), and 12% PBAN (polybutadiene acrylic acid acrylonitrile). Chemicals can be obtained from Firefox. It took ten years and about three-quarters of a million dollars in legal costs but APCP was removed by court order from BATFE's "orange book" (list of exp**sives) a couple years ago. |
Company planning biggest rocket since man on moon
Terry wrote:
On Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:04:54 -0400, "Tom Gardner" w@w wrote: Mom was a mathematician, her department checked all the equations for other departments. She did get me a sample shuttle tile. It's like Styrofoam, very light and fragile, but you can heat it with an oxy/atc torch and grab it with your hand and it's cool. She never did get me a sample of solid propellant....bitch! Tom, it's not hard to make (almost) the exact propellant used in the space shuttle. I do it in my lab; I'm sure a lot of guys do it in their garages. Ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (APCP) is less hazardous than blackpowder, smokeless, and/or most fireworks. It generally takes a flame to light APCP---a spark won't do it---and once it's lit it burns about like a road flare. It's about 16% powdered aluminum, 69+% ammonium perchlorate, a fraction of a percent of red iron oxide, 2% epoxy curing agent (DER331 works), and 12% PBAN (polybutadiene acrylic acid acrylonitrile). Chemicals can be obtained from Firefox. It took ten years and about three-quarters of a million dollars in legal costs but APCP was removed by court order from BATFE's "orange book" (list of exp**sives) a couple years ago. Who was it who first said, "Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives should be aisles in the local store, not a government bureaucracy." Apologies for the paraphrase. :-) Thanks, Rich |
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