Technical documents

[Guest]

Just doing some reading, found a nice collection of NASA technical docs on the internet archive, if anybody is interested in looking at them -

 

https://archive.org/details/nasa_techdocs

[p1t1o]

Wow, that is a lot of documents, and do you think they have enough file formats?

I wonder what else "archive.org" has....

*edit*

I'm *still* scrolling down the list of NASA docs...

*edit*

HolyMoly there are a good selection of documents here, but a few:

Lithium-Fluorine-hydrogen propellant investigation

Cryogenic on-orbit liquid propellant storage

Thrust chamber cooling techniques for spacecraft engines

Spacecraft navigation

Human tolerance to rapidly applied accelerations

Research on Uranium Plasmas and their technological applications

Saturn V Launch vehicle flight evaluation report AS-508 Apollo 13 mission

 

And Im *still* going down the list...

Seriously nice find @m-theory!

Edited July 6, 2016 by p1t1o

[p1t1o]

@sjwt I'd like to nominate the OP for sticky-ing, I've been going through the documents in the link and the amount of data relevant to a great number of common discussion topics is staggering...we've got studies on mars excursion craft, tri-propellant rockets, historical missions reports, space station studies, aerodynamics, advanced physics, you name it. A lot of it is from 1960-1990 but that is an interest factor in-and-of itself. There are approx 20,000 documents in multiple file formats and easily downloadable.

 

[Guest]

Glad you liked it guys, some nice bedtime reading

[Steel]

You guys will probably like this, it's a really nice resource.

[DDE]

On ‎06‎.‎07‎.‎2016 at 1:06 PM, p1t1o said:

Lithium-Fluorine-hydrogen propellant investigation

...

Research on Uranium Plasmas and their technological applications

Hm, those two sound familiar. Li-F-H gives you 542 sec ISP, and plasmas are for gas core nuclear thermal rockets, amirite?

[p1t1o]

46 minutes ago, DDE said:

Hm, those two sound familiar. Li-F-H gives you 542 sec ISP, and plasmas are for gas core nuclear thermal rockets, amirite?

Yup, that is exactly what the two papers on those things I found were about, there are probably multiple papers on those subjects. Astoundingly, the paper on Li-F-H makes it sound like totally ok to use, I guess it wasn't the purpose of that particular paper to discuss the relative dangers, but it does describe a series of practical experiments involving liquid fluorine, liquid lithium and liquid hydrogen, which must have been um "interesting" to work with...

Specific impulse attained was quoted (in one experiment, but representative) as 4991 N/Kg/s

The paper on uranium plasmas was about nuclear lightbulbs. I havn't read it cover-to-cover but I scanned it and one interesting takeaway was this: all current theory on gas-core nuclear lightbulbs operate the (theoretical) reactor in zero-g conditions. Under thrust, serious buoyancy issues would basically screw everything up (where you are very carefully running cooler gas between the uranium plasma and the reactor wall, for example). These things are basically the most tenuously restrained atomic dragons you could ever imagine.

Seriously, search through that site, you will find something about almost anything. Alternate shuttles, SSTOs, aerospikes, hypersonic aerodynamics, Interstellar propulsion, Mars missions, you name it.

[DDE]

7 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Yup, that is exactly what the two papers on those things I found were about, there are probably multiple papers on those subjects. Astoundingly, the paper on Li-F-H makes it sound like totally ok to use, I guess it wasn't the purpose of that particular paper to discuss the relative dangers, but it does describe a series of practical experiments involving liquid fluorine, liquid lithium and liquid hydrogen, which must have been um "interesting" to work with...

Specific impulse attained was quoted (in one experiment, but representative) as 4991 N/Kg/s

Well, I guess it's more thoroughly discussed in Ignition! and Things I Will Never Work With. Apparently, though, they also tested chlorine trifluoride:

Quote

"It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water — with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals — steel, copper, aluminum, etc. — because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes."

 

[p1t1o]

@DDE Ignition! is such a  great book, it cant be quoted too often. You should check out how much a hardcopy goes for on Amazon...