[AR] Re: Falcon 9 flight today
- From: Ben Brockert <wikkit@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2013 13:57:07 -0600
On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 1:43 PM, Henry Spencer <henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Vented propellant would be a hazard to other traffic only if that other
> traffic passed very close to the venting stage soon after venting. The
> vented propellant spreads out fast, and eventually blends into the
> surrounding atmosphere. (Note also that much of what is vented from a
> Falcon upper stage is LOX.)
There would have been a small impulse if something flew through the
cloud when it was dense, just as one of the schemes for deorbiting
space junk is to put up a suborbital cloud of dense dust in front of
the junk. I don't have software that could search for conjunctions in
any reasonable amount of time, though.
The LOX would have contributed to the particle cloud with the RP-1.
Pulling vacuum on liquid nitrogen will create solid nitrogen, as can
be demoed in the lab: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy1_R2u1UKk Same
is true for oxygen. The oxygen ice crystals wouldn't last long in
sunlight, but it wouldn't have gone straight to gas from the rocket.
Ben
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