Why Fluorine Never made it as rocket fuel

[wumpus]

13 hours ago, Flying dutchman said:

I am starting to think that a nerva would be safer than this for an upper stage..

Nervas simply don't have the disastrous failure modes that flourine has.  I'd go so far to say that they are far safer than a first stage hypergolic.  Nervas can't explode, their fuel tanks can't explode (see Apollo 13), the only real danger is overheating and meltdown (and possible extra radiation during such an event).  I wouldn't recommend lighting one at less than Earth escape velocity (at least until they are proven reliable), but even doing that should be more or less safe (I'd expect it to be possible to set it so "99% of all possible failures to reach escape velocity drop the fuel rods into the Pacific").

Your real issues would be largely about proliferation, and it would take roughly the resources of a nation state (far more than ISIL at its peak) to begin to obtain weapons grade nuclear material from a nerva.  Scott Manley (of course) had an interesting series that included roughly the steps needed to go from there to weapons: they were looooong.  I'd expect a diplomatic solution long before any nerva could be converted into something else.

Another thing I recall about KSC's location (Kennedy, not Kerbin) is that there exists an orbit from there that is almost entirely over ocean.  Since learning about real rocketry (and why you want the lowest inclination your latitude will allow) I've nearly forgotten about it, but it might be useful for something like this (then again, nervas are pretty slow.  Maybe you can angle a bit to avoid the precession thanks to Earth orbiting beneath you and maintain that exact orbit).

Edited May 7, 2019 by wumpus
I can't believe I got my Apollo missions wrong...

[DDE]

Hello there.

A few other fluorine-related things from I've got on file:

• https://archive.org/details/NASA_NTRS_Archive_19660010168
• http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=AD0266121

Edited May 6, 2019 by DDE