Interesting cheap fuels.

John Cramer's latest breakthru is adding an alcohol to 50% peroxide to make a cheap, easy to handle, easy to buy mono-propellant for his rockets.

Does anyone know more about this combination or other cheap fuel combinations? Notice I don't consider LOX to be cheap. In large bulk quanties it may be, but for small amounts the handling equipment costs alot. (Frozen valves anybody?)

I remember there was an oxidizer made by dissolving a solid oxidizer in water, what happened to that?

Also there was a hybrid rocket that had a catalyst (in? part of? was the?) fuel so all you did was open/close the valve for peroxide and it auto-started. You got the simple design of a mono-propellant engine but the performance of a hybrid, not to mention a very high DensityISP. Has there been any more developent on that?

Anything cryogenic wont ever be really cheap, probably. And eventually, orbital staging wont work out well with them. XCOR might have a second opinion, though.

The most complete propellant list online is probably
http://www.astronautix.com/props/index.htm
but i suspect you already know that.

I think if you really want cheap, its either some clever peroxide combination, or some hybrid.
Paraffin-based hybrids, currently developed at Ames sound very interesting, but this brings us back to LOX again.

There's a couple of rather nasty oxidizers that probably would never be used on the first stage engines, but possibly on orbital engines: Perchloric acid and nitric acid.

Back in the 1950's there were military experiments that involved reacting fluorine with diborane or pentaborane--a higher ISP than LH2+O2, but some of the most noxious substances ever contrived. That was back in the days when people in power didn't worry about air pollution!!! There are still some heated controversies about how to dispose of some of that stored "fuel".

One of such oxidizers would be Sodium perchlorate. About the same stuff as Shuttle SRB's use, but the plumes are toxic.

Under the aspect of the most recent post the circumstance is of particular interest that perchlorate seems to have been found at Phoenix' landing site.

I am not that sure if it has been confirmed that it doesn't stem from Phoenix itself but ...



What about it?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

I consider LOX to be cheap, because it is. You have to design for it, but that's true of every oxidizer.

And it isn't as scary as mixed monoprops.