Project Orion: A discussion of Science and Science Fiction

[magnemoe]

16 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Nothing detonates in the nozzle or in the throat. It's a chamber.

Now orion was planned to use an flat pusher plate because its an nuclear bomb and you set it off some distance from the target. 
Many pulsed fusion engine designs uses an muzzle: min-mag, the Daedalus drive and multiple others. Here the muzzle tend to be magnetic so its an framework rater than an solid bell or more likely half sphere. This gives more control and is containable since its not an nuclear bomb, you can contain an explosion, IC engines has done for over 100 years and I guess the explosion inside an large marine diesel is stronger than lots of these designs. Granted it does not give off ionized gas with an addition of neutrons and gamma rays, later is why you prefer an framework so that can just escape. 
You still get pulses but as they are weaker more conversational shock absorbers works well enough. 

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Now orion was planned to use an flat pusher plate because its an nuclear bomb and you set it off some distance from the target. 

It's a virtual chamber!
But anyway neither nozzle, nor throat.

5 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Many pulsed fusion engine designs uses an muzzle: min-mag, the Daedalus drive and multiple others.

None of them has a real nozzle. It's semi-open chambers.  But anyway not throats.

The nozzle is a shaped post-combustion fluid reflector.

It turns a spherical gas cloud into a jet.

[magnemoe]

5 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

It's a virtual chamber!
But anyway neither nozzle, nor throat.

None of them has a real nozzle. It's semi-open chambers.  But anyway not throats.

The nozzle is a shaped post-combustion fluid reflector.

It turns a spherical gas cloud into a jet.

Orion did not have an virtual chamber, it used an shaped charge so half the energy hit the pusher plate, 
Magnetic confirmed kind of create an virtual chamber as it shift the ionized gas to go backward, no throat as its not needed more than in an ion engine. 
Now setting off explosives inside an engine bell would be an bad idea. vacuum engine bells are pretty fragile, You can see an ring or ring segments falling off just after an falcon 9 upper stage fires up. This is cork who protect the edge of upper stage bell edges during launch. In short the vacuum part of engines are just strong enough to survive launch. 

[wumpus]

41 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Orion did not have an virtual chamber, it used an shaped charge so half the energy hit the pusher plate, 
Magnetic confirmed kind of create an virtual chamber as it shift the ionized gas to go backward, no throat as its not needed more than in an ion engine. 
Now setting off explosives inside an engine bell would be an bad idea. vacuum engine bells are pretty fragile, You can see an ring or ring segments falling off just after an falcon 9 upper stage fires up. This is cork who protect the edge of upper stage bell edges during launch. In short the vacuum part of engines are just strong enough to survive launch. 

I'd have to assume a parabolic pusher plate would work better (assuming any momentum bearing particles/photons would be reflected due retrograde).  If you have an explosion in the "combustion [now detonation] chamber" the whole idea is to reduce the speed of the expanding gasses inside the chamber at the throat to barely subsonic speed, followed by allowing them to expand in the parabolic bell at maximum velocity.  A nuclear explosion doesn't work that way at all.

There have also been attempts at non-nuclear pulsed detonation engines.  These were a somewhat hot research topic in the 1990s, but appeared to have gone nowhere.  One recent paper on them remarks that since the explosions are pulsed, the fuel going into the detonation chamber doesn't need high pressure, thus no turbopumps (although using atmoshperic air isn't mentioned).  I doubt that building a low-mass detonation chamber is reasonably easier/cheaper/more reliable than turbopumps, but that is a benefit.  Also the things are about as loud as possible, with all those supersonic shockwaves moving at audio frequencies...

 

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Orion did not have an virtual chamber, it used an shaped charge so half the energy hit the pusher plate, 

That's why I wrote "virtual".
The place of combustion had no walls.

Though, the shaped charge had a nozzle-shaped volume filled with solid material used as propellant after vaporization, so it was a weird kind of SRB with combined nozzle and chamber.
Actually, a normal thermal rocket, just overturned.
And the pusher plate was a reflector part of the distributed nozzle system, reverting the gas flow. Like the turbojet reverse.

8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

vacuum engine bells are pretty fragile

Except of the pusher plates, of course, lol.

7 hours ago, wumpus said:

I'd have to assume a parabolic pusher plate would work better

It would receive radial hits of expanding matter, and this would kill the whole idea together with the ship.
The parabola is inside the nuke. It's the nozzle between the primer and the membrane.

The advantage of Orion is exactly in absence of radial stress limiting the engine size and power.

That's why the Mini-Mag Orion should anyway have no chamber, but should ignite the pellets with X-ray emitters far behind the ship, outside of its structures.

And that's why irl the Mini-Mag "pellets" would have complex structure, not simpler than the classic Orion nukes one.
They anyway would need heavy metal as final propellant, to carry momentum in dedicated direction.
Just without fissiles. (And it's a question if it's easier to make such Z-pinch portable machine or to produce twenty tonnes of oralloy more.)

Also, when the D-D fusion reactors working on oceanic deuterium will be usual, the oceanic uranium will be being extracted and enriched as well.
So, the unlimited power of D-D and unlimited oceanic uranium can easily make oralloy and tritium production by orders of magnitude higher, and fission Orions normal, due to their simplicity compared to remote fusion. 

Edited September 11, 2022 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

After watching the KSPI-E cfgs, it took some time to decide is it's about Orion or Fun facts, as it's fun facts about Orion.

But according to the fundamental Mini-Mag Orion description
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268042768_Mini-Mag-Orion_A_Pulsed_Nuclear_Rocket_for_Crewed_Solar_System_Exploration

, they (the irl they, not KSP) indeed are/were going to use ²⁴⁵Cm as a fissile for its pellets, because the ship gets twice lighter than the ²³⁹Pu-based variant.

Who cares that ²⁴⁵Cm is fully artificial (produced in reactors from artificial plutonium), thus very rare,  and is mixed with highly radioactive curium isotopes.

Edited September 14, 2022 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

As I heard several days ago, Arthur Clarke was a part of the Project Orion community, was fond of it, and originally was planning the 2001: Odyssey's Discovery to be an orion.

See also
https://www.spaceflightinsider.com/space-flight-history/project-orion-nuclear-bomb-rocket/

Quote

The plans for Orion were anything but timid. Manned Mars missions using this vessel would have been sent in 1965, followed by a mission to the ringed planet Saturn in 1970! The spaceship in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the USS Discovery, was originally designed as an Orion type craft aimed at Saturn in the novel version. The author of the film’s screenplay and novel, Arthur C. Clarke, was also a member of Project Orion.

He even suggested that to Stanley Kubrick as a part of his movie, but Kubrick was actively against this idea because he was a part of anti-nuclear movement.
So, Discovery stayed another abstract nuclear rocketship.

P.S.
But we know the truth.
If Discovery was Orion, how should Kubrick explain why his lunar Apollo were rockets.

[intelliCom]

Some of the biggest issues of developing Project Orion stem from the ionising radiation created by nuclear fission. Not only can it cause significant damage to sensitive components, and harm to a ship's crew, but the public perception of nuclear energy in general is quite poor. At least poor enough that something like Project Orion would never see much development without the necessary public support, let alone the lack of support that spaceflight itself already has.

But what makes nuclear fission the only option?

I have absolutely no science background besides my primary and secondary education, so please pardon me if I come across as scientifically illiterate.
Would it be possible to use different, non-nuclear explosives for less efficiency, but yet higher efficiency than the conventional chemical rocket engines we use now?

[Gargamel]

Overlapping threads have been merged 

[intelliCom]

3 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Overlapping threads have been merged 

I was considering it, but I didn't think that the discussion of non-nuclear explosives would still count as Project Orion itself.

[Gargamel]

1 minute ago, intelliCom said:

I was considering it, but I didn't think that the discussion of non-nuclear explosives would still count as Project Orion itself.

Apparently you are not familiar with the thread.    We have a very wide definition of “Orion” in this thread.   
 

it’s perfectly fine here.   Anything with a pusher plate counts as Orion. 

[intelliCom]

5 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Anything with a pusher plate counts as Orion. 

Counter-argument...

Spoiler

...Medusa.

 

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, intelliCom said:

public perception of nuclear energy in general is quite poor.

Spoiler

A "bublic per..." wut, did you say?

A decade or two of proper TV shows and influencer beauty blogs, and the next generation will be laughing at the old farts' fear of nuclear power, bringing these photos as an evidence of the obvious granny's sclerotic dementia.

Especially when a petrol car is a luxury, while the nuke plant at horizon is feeding your Tesla.
 

1 hour ago, intelliCom said:

But what makes nuclear fission the only option?

Fusion is more technically complicated.

2 hours ago, intelliCom said:

Would it be possible to use different, non-nuclear explosives for less efficiency, but yet higher efficiency than the conventional chemical rocket engines we use now?

Chemical explosives are  energetically weak, just their blow is quick.

TNT is ten times weaker than petrol.

 

 

 

[Terwin]

3 hours ago, intelliCom said:

Some of the biggest issues of developing Project Orion stem from the ionising radiation created by nuclear fission. Not only can it cause significant damage to sensitive components, and harm to a ship's crew, but the public perception of nuclear energy in general is quite poor. At least poor enough that something like Project Orion would never see much development without the necessary public support, let alone the lack of support that spaceflight itself already has.

But what makes nuclear fission the only option?

I have absolutely no science background besides my primary and secondary education, so please pardon me if I come across as scientifically illiterate.
Would it be possible to use different, non-nuclear explosives for less efficiency, but yet higher efficiency than the conventional chemical rocket engines we use now?

A pusher-plate design is incredibly inefficient.

The ONLY reason to use a pusher-plate is if you have a hugely efficient reaction with a high minimum size.

Fission has this with 'Critical mass' as the simplest fission explosions just involve just putting together enough plutonium (approx 10kg) and you get a nice big explosion.

This explosion is too powerful for any known materials to contain for a normal nozzle-type arrangement, so they designed a huegly inefficient pusher-plate design to potentially make use of the 8000x efficiency of nuclear over chemical.  Unfortunately, the gross inefficiency of the pusher-plate means that it is only about 13x the efficiency of the space shuttle main engines.  (giving the pusher-plate an efficiency of roughly 0.16% or 1/615 the efficiency of a  nozzle)

So unless your explosion is more than 600 times the efficiency of a hydrolox engine, you will not get any benefits for using a pusher-plate, and if your reaction is small enough to use with a nozzle, you can get roughly 600x the efficiency by using a nozzle over a pusher-plate.  Note: Fusion pellets can be(and currently must be) made small enough for a nozzle, so pusher-plates only work with fission.

In short, pusher plates are great for steam-punk fission rockets, but fail miserably for anything better.

Edited December 16, 2022 by Terwin

[kerbiloid]

7 minutes ago, Terwin said:

A pusher-plate design is incredibly inefficient.

Being compared to the cooling system and magnetic nozzles, it's even overpowered.

Orion nozzle and cooling system are literally consist of nothing.

8 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Fission has this with 'Critical mass' as the simplest fission explosions just involve just putting together enough plutonium (approx 10kg) and you get a nice big explosion.

Orion should use uranium, plutonium (4 kg) causes too many problems.

11 minutes ago, Terwin said:

This explosion is too powerful for any known materials to contain for a normal nozzle-type arrangement, so they designed a huegly inefficient pusher-plate design to potentially make use of the 8000x efficiency of nuclear over chemical.  Unfortunately, the gross inefficiency of the pusher-plate means that it is only about 13x the efficiency of the space shuttle main engines.  (giving the pusher-plate an efficiency of roughly 0.16% or 1/615 the efficiency of a  nozzle)

Orion needs just several tonnes of weapon-grade uranium to deliver by order of magnitude greater mass than a biggest chemical rocket.

Energetically it's very efficient, compared to its alternatives, only the cost of uranium charges limits, and the lower limit of a nuclear charge yield per this cost.
The yield may be as low as possible, but still requires ~4 kg of fissiles, so too low yield is too expensive.

It doesn't just "put together enough fissiles", it produces a highly developed direct blast of the 3rd generation two-stage device , and the pusher plate is a complex gas- and hydrodynamic system receiving the pulse without damage.

17 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Fusion pellets can be(and currently must be) made small enough for a nozzle, so pusher-plates only work with fission.

And they provide luminosity which would establish equilibrium temperature of any nozzle close to its melting point, thus limiting both the nozzle size from below and the total power (i.r. thrust) from above.

So, any other design can provide only low thrust, inappropriate for both ascending or crewed missions.

19 minutes ago, Terwin said:

In short, pusher plates are great for steam-punk fission rockets, but fail miserably for anything better.

Nuclear plants are a steampunk. They just boil a steam boiler instead of woods, because they are cheaper than forest.

[intelliCom]

8 hours ago, Terwin said:

A pusher-plate design is incredibly inefficient.

The ONLY reason to use a pusher-plate is if you have a hugely efficient reaction with a high minimum size.

Fission has this with 'Critical mass' as the simplest fission explosions just involve just putting together enough plutonium (approx 10kg) and you get a nice big explosion.

This explosion is too powerful for any known materials to contain for a normal nozzle-type arrangement, so they designed a huegly inefficient pusher-plate design to potentially make use of the 8000x efficiency of nuclear over chemical.  Unfortunately, the gross inefficiency of the pusher-plate means that it is only about 13x the efficiency of the space shuttle main engines.  (giving the pusher-plate an efficiency of roughly 0.16% or 1/615 the efficiency of a  nozzle)

So unless your explosion is more than 600 times the efficiency of a hydrolox engine, you will not get any benefits for using a pusher-plate, and if your reaction is small enough to use with a nozzle, you can get roughly 600x the efficiency by using a nozzle over a pusher-plate.  Note: Fusion pellets can be(and currently must be) made small enough for a nozzle, so pusher-plates only work with fission.

In short, pusher plates are great for steam-punk fission rockets, but fail miserably for anything better.

I'm sorry, but my focus is on the explosive material in use, and not the mechanism. Let's just say there was a different mechanism utilising non-nuclear explosions. Could non-nuclear explosions be used as a viable propulsion, if not why? If such reasons as to 'why not' have no direct relation to the material in use, adjust them so they would work.

[Shpaget]

The main purpose of the pusher plate is to tame the insane energies of even the smallest of nuclear explosions. Using chemical explosives, you can have as small of a boom as you like, so it would make much more sense to contain that small explosion inside a rocket nozzle a direct it in obe directio, but explosions are pulsing in nature which causes vibrations, so it's beneficial to have small booms at high frequency, which leads to conventional burning design we see today (these are not actually explosions, but rather deflagration)

That being said,  there is some research ongoing dealing with rotational detonation engine where there is an actual explosion going on continuously around an annular nozzle. Theoretically, this could be up to about 25% more efficient than deflagration.

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, intelliCom said:

Could non-nuclear explosions be used as a viable propulsion

No.
Their specific calorific value is pathetic even if compare them to chemical rocket propellants.
Chemical explosives are rather poor source of energy, they just release it quickly.

TNT provides ~4.2 MJ/kg. The most calorific explosives ~8 MJ/kg.
Hydrocarbon fuel ~40 MJ/kg, oxidizer:fuel ratio of rocket engines ~2.5, so in total 12 MJ/kg.
Even the best chemical explosives are much weaker than bad rocket fuel.

Fissiles are ~17.5 kt/kg ~= 7.4*10⁷ MJ/kg.
A whole nuclear charge for Orion would mass about 100..200 kg, including ~4 kg of fissiles, so even then it's ~10⁶ MJ/kg, by orders of magnitude more than any chemistry can provide.

Exhaust speed of the chemicals (and thus ISP) does not exceed 10 km/s.
Even their detonation speed doesn't. 
Even shaped charges achieve just 15 km/s speed.

While the nuclear Orion jet speed is > 100 km/s.

So, a chemical Orion makes no sense at all.
While the nuclear Orion is an unique combination of high ISP (and thus efficiency for the same propellant mass) and high thrust (so it can easily lift up from the gravity well of a planet and accelerate to interplanetary speed in less than an hour).

This makes it outstanding and the only known realistic project of real crewed space flights.

Edited December 17, 2022 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

P.S.
A typical Orion spends 2..4 charges per second. Yield = 0.1..5 kt.
Let it be 2 x 1 kt/s.

Power = 2 * 1 * 4.2*10¹² ~= 8.4*10¹² J/s ~ 10 TW.

Exhaust speed ~100 km/s, so force ~10*10¹²  / 100 000 = 10⁸ N.

Acceleration ~ 1 g = 10 m/s².

So, total mass ~= 10⁸ / 10 ~10⁷ kg ~ 10 000 t.

Due to energy waste, several times less.

And yes, its mass is estimated as hundreds to thousands tonnes.

***

Let's take a nozzle with fusion pellets burning inside.

It doesn't matter, how small are the pellets, only the total power is important.

Same ship, same power, 10 TW.

Major or at least significant part of these 10 TW will be released as radiation, heating the nozzle from inside.

Let's presume the nozzle may be 1 000 K to stay intact and solid.

L = 4 pi R_nozzle² * 5.67*10^-8 * Tnozzle⁴

R_nozzle =  sqrt(L / (4 pi * 5.67*10^-8 * Tnozzle⁴)) =  sqrt(10¹³ / (4 pi * 5.67*10^-8 * 1 000⁴)) ~= 3 800 m.

So, an pellet/nozzle alternative must have a 8 km wide nozzle. It's hard in space and absolutely impossible in air.

Let's take a 100 wide nozzle instead.
To keep it 1 000 K cold, the total power should be reduced (8 000 / 100)² = 6 400 ~10⁴ times.

So, the T/W of such engine would be just 10^-4.
It makes it impossible to lift it from ground on its own, and the burn time to Mars will grow from 10 min (for Orion) to 100 000 min ~= 2 months.

This also makes the crrew protection much heavier,
Because the Orionish 20 minutes from ground launch to transfer orbit burn end the crew can be just tamped with guards' rifle buttstocks into a tiny cramped sardine can with thick walls and a narrow but thick shield below.
While two months of acceleration means that you have to shield all the habitat.

So, to the date Orion actually has no viable alternatives.

[sevenperforce]

On 12/16/2022 at 8:39 PM, intelliCom said:

I'm sorry, but my focus is on the explosive material in use, and not the mechanism. Let's just say there was a different mechanism utilising non-nuclear explosions. Could non-nuclear explosions be used as a viable propulsion, if not why? If such reasons as to 'why not' have no direct relation to the material in use, adjust them so they would work.

Rocket engines essentially are a continuous non-nuclear explosion. Technically they're deflagration rather than detonation (although, as @Shpaget points out, there is very promising research into continuous rotating detonation engines; in fact they have even flown test articles).

If your question, then, is whether explosive pulses can be a viable propulsion mechanism (through a pusher-plate or otherwise), then you need look no further than the V-1 Buzzbomb used in WWII by the pedants. It was the world's first operational cruise missile and was powered by an extremely simple pulsejet engine, using repeated fuel-air explosions where the fuel was gasoline). A pulsed detonation engine like this is quite simple and lightweight for the amount of thrust it produces, but it is much less efficient than a proper jet turbine engine. 

There are also a number of designs that use explosive pulses because we are unable to sustain a continuous explosion, like Z-pinch fusion. 

For non-nuclear explosions to be a viable propulsion mechanism with a pusher-plate arrangement, they would need to be (a) at least 165 times more energetic per unit mass than a hydrogen-oxygen reaction and (b) not be amenable to a traditional propulsion arrangement.

Example: suppose that scientists discover an exotic metastable state of superfluid liquid helium in which the atoms exhibit persistent quantum superposition such that a single atom can be host to several billion different degrees of freedom rather than the 3 degrees of freedom in a typical monatomic gas. This would allow you to pump almost infinite amounts of energy into the helium without increasing its temperature or pressure, making it an explosive with potency rivaled only by antimatter itself.

Ordinarily, if you wanted to use this for propulsion, you would simply have a big tank of this stuff connected to a small valve that would allow the metastable helium to enter a combustion chamber little by little, where it would lose its metastable nature and explode in the chamber. This would work well. However, maybe the metastable helium has a minimum volume requirement in order to stay stable, comprising such a quantity that the resulting explosion on destabilization would be vastly greater than what any chamber could withstand. In that case, you might need a pusher-plate or other pulsed propulsion setup.

[magnemoe]

On 12/16/2022 at 2:49 PM, intelliCom said:

Some of the biggest issues of developing Project Orion stem from the ionising radiation created by nuclear fission. Not only can it cause significant damage to sensitive components, and harm to a ship's crew, but the public perception of nuclear energy in general is quite poor. At least poor enough that something like Project Orion would never see much development without the necessary public support, let alone the lack of support that spaceflight itself already has.

But what makes nuclear fission the only option?

I have absolutely no science background besides my primary and secondary education, so please pardon me if I come across as scientifically illiterate.
Would it be possible to use different, non-nuclear explosives for less efficiency, but yet higher efficiency than the conventional chemical rocket engines we use now?

In short no, chemical explosives are basically monopropelants. I assume high explosives like dynamite and TNT has even less performance than gunpowder but it explodes without being inside an pressure container and you can not set it off with fire. For stuff like gunpowder it can be an bomb, rocket or cannon depending on setup. 
Liquid fuel+oxidizer hold more energy as it does not need to be stable combined. 

Nuclear is more than 100.000 time more energetic than chemical so you can loose 90% of performance and still come out on top. 

[sevenperforce]

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

chemical explosives are basically monopropelants.

Well, yes and no. Monopropellants, strictly, describe a propellant made up of a group of molecules that break down into smaller molecules exothermically. For example, two H₂O₂ molecules decompose into two H₂O molecules and one O₂ molecule, releasing energy in the process. This decomposition reaction happens slowly at room temperature but happens explosively at high heat or in the presence of certain catalysts like silver or titanium. Similarly, one N₂H₄ molecule decomposes into one N₂ molecule and two H₂ molecules, releasing a tremendous amount of energy; this reaction does not happen at all under ordinary conditions but happens explosively in the presence of a catalyst like iridium.

Monopropellant reactions are still a chemical reaction that is no different, essentially, than bipropellant reactions. The only distinction is that instead of the reactant molecules being stored separately, they are stored within a single, large, unstable molecule. It takes energy to separate a single H₂O₂ (hydrogen peroxide) molecule into a water molecule and an oxygen atom, but that oxygen atom will subsequently react with another oxygen atom to form diatomic oxygen, releasing much more energy than it took to separate the two from their host molecules. It takes energy to break the four hydrogen atoms clean of their N₂H₄ host (that's hydrazine), but the energy obtained from those two H+H reactions and the free nitrogen bonds forming into triple-bonded diatomic nitrogen is far greater than the losses.

Some chemical explosives are monopropellants. Famously, TNT is made up of a single molecule, C₇H₅N₃O₆, which decomposes with extreme prejudice into diatomic nitrogen, elemental carbon, carbon monoxide, and diatomic hydrogen. Nitroglycerin is made up of C₃H₅N₃O₉, with similar results. However, neither TNT nor nitroglycerin are as brisant or as energy-efficient as anatol and ANFO, both of which contain a mixture of an oxidizer and a reagent.

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

I assume high explosives like dynamite and TNT has even less performance than gunpowder but it explodes without being inside an pressure container and you can not set it off with fire.

TNT and other high explosives have MUCH better performance than gunpowder. By gunpowder I assume you mean black powder; modern gunpowder is made from nitrocellulose. Energy content and ease of detonation aren't inversely related or anything; there are plenty of high explosives that are extremely shock-sensitive, like ammonium chlorate, nitroglycerin, silver fulminate, diazomethane, and ammonium permanganate.

The distinction, typically, is that chemists formulate high explosives as either primary or secondary so that they can create controlled explosions. If you collect a dime-sized of, say, silver fulminate, it's likely to detonate under its own weight. However, you can stack up a whole industrial-sized pallet of RDX or TNT without ill effects. So what you do is pack a bunch of RDX around the thing you want to destroy, then run your electrical detonator line to the tiny pellet of silver fulminate you've stuck to the side.

Both RDX and silver fulminate are of course vastly more brisant and more energy-efficient than gunpowder.

4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

For stuff like gunpowder it can be an bomb, rocket or cannon depending on setup. 
Liquid fuel+oxidizer hold more energy as it does not need to be stable combined. 

Technically, you can "stably" combine kerosene and liquid oxygen. It forms a dirty grey gel. This gel is an incredibly powerful explosive, but it's also cryogenic so it's not exactly useful in ordinary applications.

Solid rocket fuel is usually made of ammonium perchlorate composite. It is a mixture of an explosive oxidizer (ammonium perchlorate), a weakly reducing binder (hydroxyl-terminate polybutadiene or polybutadiene acrylic acid acrylonitrile prepolymer), and a violently reducing fuel (usually powdered aluminum). It's basically the ingredients of a bomb, but put together in such a way that it burns in a controlled fashion under a set temperature and pressure.

[Spacescifi]

On 12/20/2022 at 9:40 AM, sevenperforce said:

Example: suppose that scientists discover an exotic metastable state of superfluid liquid helium in which the atoms exhibit persistent quantum superposition such that a single atom can be host to several billion different degrees of freedom rather than the 3 degrees of freedom in a typical monatomic gas. This would allow you to pump almost infinite amounts of energy into the helium without increasing its temperature or pressure, making it an explosive with potency rivaled only by antimatter itself.

Ordinarily, if you wanted to use this for propulsion, you would simply have a big tank of this stuff connected to a small valve that would allow the metastable helium to enter a combustion chamber little by little, where it would lose its metastable nature and explode in the chamber. This would work well.

 

It is not everyday you write scifi scenarios but when you do it's epic.

 

If I understand what you said correctly, what you made is essentially an uber heat sink fluid.

Something you can pump a high energy laser into and it would absorb the energy rather than evaporating.

Unless of course it had reached it's saturation point, at which point a high energy laser hit on the fuel tank would cause an epic explosion.

 

Besides this, how would you pump energy into the super liquid fuel? Laser beams? Just not enough to saturate it?

 

It sounds cool... like a liquid super battery which kind of doubles as anti-laser armor assuming you shielded crewed areas with fuel tanks of the energy absorbing propellant that won't become hotter or compressed because of adding energy to it.

 

Did I understand correctly?

 

And last question.. if you have the technology to play with quantum superposition well enough to create a super fuel... what else can you do?

 

My guess is super materials.

 

Maybe ones that can take friction and blunt force to extreme or tension... making stuff like orbital elevators possible.