August 22, 2011 - by Recent developments on the DoubleSShot rocket #13
August 21, 2011 - by A new rocket fuel? Part 21
Have you read the newspaper today? What have you done with the newspaper? Thrown it in the dust bin or recylce bin? Can you imagine, newspaper can be rocket fuel and blast us to the moon or to other planets?
August 19, 2011 - by A new rocket fuel? Part 20
Today I will explain what hexaphenox is. As mentioned the term hexahenox is an artificial word. hex stands for hexamine, phen for the chemical name of the catalyst phenolphthalein and ox for oxidizer, which can be KNO3, KClO3, KClO4, NH4NO3, NH4ClO4 etc. You read right, the catalyst is phenolphthalein, often used in titrations, it turns colorless in acidic solutions and pink in basic solutions.
How I stumbled now just over phenolphthalein?
August 19, 2011 - by A new rocket fuel? Part 19
First experiment using white wood glue (polyvinyl acetate) as a binder for the hexaphenox. The advantage is that polyvinyl acetate emulsify very well with a 50:50 ratio of water/methanol and hexaphenox is completely solveable in water/methanol which gives the propellant a high density and therefore a good performance:
August 18, 2011 - by A new rocket fuel? Part 18
Experimental rocket, propelled by 40g hexaphenox, HD video camera, serial data telemetry, beacon:
HD version of the flight sequence:
August 16, 2011 - by A new rocket fuel? Part 17
35.5g KClO3, 7.5g hexamine, 5g catalyst and 1.5g epoxy as a binder, casted in a 30mm ID PVC tube with 10mm dia. core. 15 min in dry chamber at 80 ºC to remove the isopropyl alcohol, which acted as a solvent for the resin and hardener. Ignition with e-match.
August 15, 2011 - by Recent developments on the DoubleSShot rocket #12
- Paul Avery successfully cast the Delay Plug for the motor (the shorter "burnt configuration"):
"I'm glad to report that the first Delay Plug came out of the mold today after a 22 hour cure, and the part looks great. Maybe just a few very tiny flaws at the top of the part. As I said, we mixed two 500 gram batches and that was more than enough. I had to re-open the mold several times to get the volume right because the propellant definitely does NOT want to extrude despite the fact that I opened the vent hole from 1/4" to 3/8".
August 15, 2011 - by A new rocket fuel? Part 16
Experiment, using epoxy as the fuel itself and KClO3 as oxidizer:
Further reading: http://www.nakka-rocketry.net/rnx_int.html
August 15, 2011 - by A new rocket fuel? Part 15
I started to experiment with epoxy as a binder for hexaphenox. The initial problem was that I did not want to use epoxy as a fuel but just as a binder. But how to mix a small amount of viscous expoxy with a big amount of hexaphenox? The trick is as following: Solve the resin and the hardener in isopropyl alcohol (Both, resin and hardener are completely solveable in isopropyl alcohol)! The hardening process will not start till a certain amount of the isopropyl alcohol is vaporized. The first image shows the hexaphenox just mixed with the isopropyl alcohol/resin/hardener mixture.
August 11, 2011 - by More rumble in the Google Lunar X Prize jungle
While the still legal binding MTA 3.0 says
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