[AR] Re: exothermic heating of water
- From: "John Dom" <johndom@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2019 20:56:01 +0200
Terry, Uwe, Bruno, Keith wrote on 28-29/07/2019:
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).
I witnessed a steamrocket launch from a distance of say 20 m in the nineties.
Around the time you mention, steamrockets, were not uncommon. Staged ones were.
No illegal propulsion chemicals required! The inventor then was a German who
wrote a thesis about it. He thought big. The water inside his thick walled
rocket fuselage was heated over night using electrical heating ribbon. That
ribbon was coiled around the rocket cylinder. On the bottom of this cylinder
was an electrovalve in the exhaust.
When that valve was opened, the rocket lifted off full speed, the steam
decompression roar was of a shattering intensity.
The down side of steam rockets was/is it took so long to heat the water to
superheated steam and that required a 220 VAC mains outlet. Maybe the patent
discussed now wanted to avoid such waiting time. The mass of a steam rocket is
considerable and could do damage like a bomb at impact. Bottles with high
pressure have also been lauched.
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...
Electrolysis, heating plus and H2/O2 gas ignition I never heard of. Except for
a hypersonic gas gun used in some institute in Moscow. That only used an H2/O2
gas mix_no water required.
John D.
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:
Back in the 1960s, I worked out a steam rocket, based an H oxygen
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_.
Method of choice: electrothermal heating
Uwe
We did quite a lot with steam rockets. A 50 kN thruster to push around a
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)
--
Dr. Terry McCreary
Professor Emeritus
Murray State University
Murray KY 42071
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