[AR] venting (was Re: Re: Falcon 9 flight today)
- From: Henry Spencer <henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2013 11:58:30 -0400 (EDT)
On Mon, 7 Oct 2013, Ben Brockert wrote:
> The LOX would have contributed to the particle cloud with the RP-1.
> Pulling vacuum on liquid nitrogen will create solid nitrogen... 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.
Some would go to gas while some went to solid -- it's the evaporation of
part of it that chills the rest enough to freeze.
The crystals wouldn't last long even when not in sunlight, because the
nice warm Earth filling almost half the sky is, if anything, even more
important to the thermal balance of something in LEO. The crystals would
quickly warm to the point that they'd have a substantial vapor pressure,
and then dwindle and disappear.
The gas, whether formed directly or by sublimation of the crystals, will
expand rapidly to very low density, and then decelerate by collisions with
the surrounding atmosphere, quickly merging into it.
Henry Spencer
henry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
(regexpguy@xxxxxxxxx)
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