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The attendant wears a full hazmat suit due to the hazards of the hypergolic fuel hydrazine, here being loaded onto the MESSENGER space probe. A hypergolic propellant is a rocket propellant combination used in a rocket engine, whose components spontaneously ignite when they come into contact with each other.
Aerozine 50 is a 50:50 mix by weight of hydrazine and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH), [1] [2] developed in the late 1950s by Aerojet General Corporation as a storable, high-energy, hypergolic fuel for the Titan II ICBM rocket engines.
The rocket is launched using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen cryogenic propellants. Rocket propellant is used as reaction mass ejected from a rocket engine to produce thrust. The energy required can either come from the propellants themselves, as with a chemical rocket, or from an external source, as with ion engines.
UDMH is often used in hypergolic rocket fuels as a bipropellant in combination with the oxidizer nitrogen tetroxide and less frequently with IRFNA (inhibited red fuming nitric acid) or liquid oxygen. [12] UDMH is a derivative of hydrazine and is sometimes referred to as a hydrazine. As a fuel, it is described in specification MIL-PRF-25604 in ...
Propellants requiring continuous refrigeration, which cause their rockets to grow ever-thicker blankets of ice, were not practical. As the military was willing to handle and use hazardous materials, a great number of dangerous chemicals were brewed up in large batches, most of which wound up being deemed unsuitable for operational systems.
Embodying a pressure-fed fuel system using hypergolic (self-igniting) propellants, the ascent engine was fixed-thrust and nongimbaled, capable of lifting the ascent stage off the Moon or aborting a landing if necessary.
Liquid propellants are often pumped into the combustion chamber with a lightweight centrifugal turbopump. Recently, some aerospace companies have used electric pumps with batteries. In simpler, small engines, an inert gas stored in a tank at a high pressure is sometimes used instead of pumps to force propellants into the combustion chamber.
Dinitrogen tetroxide is a powerful oxidizer that is hypergolic (spontaneously reacts) upon contact with various forms of hydrazine, which has made the pair a common bipropellant for rockets. Structure and properties