It was Tim Pickens
-----Original Message-----
From: Terry McCreary <tmccreary@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: arocket <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Mon, Jul 29, 2019 8:56 am
Subject: [AR] Re: exothermic heating of water
About 25 years ago, Tom Pickens(?) flew a fair-sized steam rocket at the
first Tripoli launch I attended. Electrically heated. It was at an
away pad, so when he launched it there was a huge white cloud but was
almost silent (at that distance).
If memory serves, the water was heated and pressure built up by
electrolysis. If that's correct, it's no wonder that the thing was far
away. Stoichiometric mix of hydrogen and oxygen gases under high
pressure and elevated temperature...
Best -- Terry
On 7/29/2019 1:34 AM, Bruno Berger wrote:
--
Am 29.07.19 um 08:22 schrieb Uwe Klein:
Am 28.07.2019 um 19:25 schrieb Keith Henson:We did quite a lot with steam rockets. A 50 kN thruster to push around a
Back in the 1960s, I worked out a steam rocket, based an H oxygenMethod of choice: electrothermal heating
cylinder almost full of water. The only thing I remember after all
this time was the estimate that it would reach 20,000 feet. (This
might be wrong, and no, I am not going to reconstruct the math.)
The design was an H cylinder in a launch cradle with a bunch of
_propane heaters_.
Uwe
car from one of the German premium car builders. They wanted to simulate
side impacts with it. Worked quite well... and yes it was heated
electrically. It needed about half an hour to get the 25 kg water to 250 °C
Bruno
"At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test
pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor
engineering early in aviation" (Igor Sikorsky)
