🚀 go-pugleaf

-From: juan@hal.COM (John Thompson Reynolds)
-Subject: Aluminum as rocket fuel?
-Date: 28 Dec 92 14:36:43 GMT
-Organization: HaL Computer Systems, Inc.

(Appropriate last name for such a question. :-)  :-)

-I've seen references in the past which suggest using Lunar O2 and Aluminum
-as rocket fuels.  Have there been any fairly detailed designs of how such
-a beast would be constructed?  Perhaps a hollow cylinder of packed Aluminum
-dust into which LOX is pumped?

Here's the only fairly solid reference I've come across. If you could
contact the company and post some information, the readers of sci.space
would be very grateful.

An aluminum-oxygen engine could potentially be very useful for launch from
the moon, since both materials are abundant there (and hydrogen is at best
very rare, and therefore valuable). I expect the specific impulse isn't too
great, but you don't need a very high specific impulse to escape from the
moon.

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>From: freed@nss.FIDONET.ORG (Bev Freed)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Toward 2001 - 02 Dec
Message-ID: <1868.293C0AA9@nss.FIDONET.ORG>
Date: 3 Dec 91 02:05:21 GMT
Organization: The NSS BBS, Pittsburgh PA (412) 366-5208

                            ***********
                            TOWARD 2001
                            ***********
                      Week of 2 December 1991
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This information is reproduced by permission of the Space Age 
Publishing Company.  All rights reserved.  Copyright December 2, 
1991...
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                           * * * * * * *
+ Wickman Space and Propulsion
Sacramento CA
 
Lunar soil broken down into liquid oxygen and aluminum powder powers 
a new engine being developed by Wickman engineers. A subscale engine 
has been sucessfully tested for periods of up to 35 seconds at 
varying levels of thrust.
                           * * * * * * *
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John Roberts
roberts@cmr.ncsl.nist.gov