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I hate to have to link to the x-birdsite, but https://twitter.com/ToughSf/status/1769958999279927787
Rocket propellants are often fun. This one is designed to fuck things up on a magnitude that's up there with Project PLUTO, by using elemental fluorine reacting with liquid lithium _heated by cesium-137_.
For when you absolutely positively have to fuck literally everything that so much as looks at your exhaust funny.
One to entertain (FSVO) @cstross and similar fans of cruel and unusual chemistry.
@digitalraven my brain decided to nope out at “fluorine boiloff vent”
@digitalraven Does not contain enough organomercury compounds to maximize environmental impact!
There's always the hope that someone will try putting out a Caesium fire with water: although it might be less energetic than firefighters' foam spontaneously igniting on contact with fluorine.
The glaring omission is that they didn't try FOOF, the super-duper oxidant available to any cheerful and insouciant chemist who relishes the vigorous oxidation of Oxygen by Fluorine, and knows it's someone else's problem to store the stuff.
Anyone spring to mind?
Mean while, read all about FOOF -
https://edu.rsc.org/magnificent-molecules/dioxygen-difluoride/3010858.article
Practical rocket scientists will be delighted to discover that FOOF is used in the Nuclear industry, and is therefore available in bulk quantities to the discerning gentlemen of aerospace engineering.
I wonder if used FOOF is available at a discount, and I would be delighted to read any commercial correspondence on the matter.
Even, or especially, if it is unflattering to those involved.
@hairyears @cstross @digitalraven May I point you to the wonderful Blog by Derek Lowe "In the Pipeline", which has a section called "Things I won't work with". Its an exquisite selection of NOPEs. https://www.science.org/action/doSearch?AllField=Things+I+Won%27t+Work+With
@rstein @cstross @digitalraven
I've been a fan of Lowe for years - he's calmed down in the last decade or so, but his blog is still a good source on the state of pharma!
@hairyears @cstross @digitalraven Probably a rocket fuel chemist.
I think the Cesium-137 vapor amply makes up for that.
@CliftonR @digitalraven Needs red mercury to be real to one-up it properly!
@digitalraven Doesn't this require hydrogen propellant also? Rocketdyne's 542s tripropellant rocket used fluorine burning with lithium, but since lithium flourine is solid, it also needed hydrogen so the exhaust would ... like ... expand and stuff out the rocket nozzle.
Now, a big problem with triprop rockets is that while they may offer somewhat higher Isp than hydrolox, they do so at the expense of consuming MORE hydrogen than hydrolox. So they end up worse.
@digitalraven@retro.pizza This sounds like one in the spirit of Derek Lowe's Things I Won't Work With, from his blog In The Pipeline. (Which, if you know any non-trivial amount about chemistry, and perhaps even if you don't, is both hilarious and terrifying.)
@digitalraven sand won’t save you this time
@digitalraven Love it. Geeky death chemistry and rocket science all rolled into one...
"elemental fluorine ..."
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Not gonna do it.
See "Things I Won't Work With" - half his entries are fluorine-based. "If you try to smother the fire with sand, it will set the sand on fire" is the kind of thing you run into ...
@digitalraven on the bright side, you can presumably make batteries from some of the exhaust products.
@digitalraven @cstross One shudders to imagine the fueling procedures.
@digitalraven @nyrath
Disappointed they couldn't find a way to work boranes into the mix.