Mixed monoprops have large enough upsides that there's always someone
trying to figure out a way to do it stably enough for useful
operations. And once one is committed to such an effort, there's a very
human urge to derive "this one is different and really won't
spontaneously explode" from "it hasn't spontaneously exploded in our
tests, yet". At least in this case, once the tests revealed this mix
too would indeed spontaneously explode, they commendably did back off
and didn't try to persuade some poor F-15 pilot to fly regardless with
several tons of the stuff hanging off his airplane.
I'm all in favor of testing new monoprops that do show some plausible
chance of finally being the miracle brew that'll match biprop
performance while also being usefully stable. Testing very carefully,
at a safe distance from anyone, and then when it too most likely goes
"BANG", publishing the results to save future repeats, and NOT
stubbornly continuing to promote that particular brew as safe.
Henry
On 1/23/2020 8:34 AM, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
On 23/01/2020 00:06, Ben Brockert wrote:
Jeff performed his role well of pointing out the arc of recent DARPA launch programs. https://spacenews.com/boeing-drops-out-of-darpa-experimental-spaceplane-program/
"Boeing won a contract in 2014 to develop a rocket using an unusual “mixed monopropellant” of nitrous oxide and acetylene, called NA-7, that could be launched from an F-15.
However, DARPA ended plans to perform a flight demonstration with ALASA in November 2015 after discovering that NA-7 was too volatile to be safely handled."
While I guess up to half of what I buy is not really used much or well, I think 'most everyone here could have told them that...
Peter Fairbrother
